Mega Man X: The Reploid Independence Day Files
by Erico
Summary: June 4th, 2118 C.E- The so-called "Day of Sigma", when the top Maverick Hunter cast off all his shackles and started a war against humanity and its defenders that would last for a century. These are the stories of that day...and all that came with it.
1. 2004: Musings Take Hold

_**MEGA MAN X: THE REPLOID INDEPENDENCE DAY FILES**_

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

**2004: Musings Take Hold**

_Since 2004, every year I marked June 4__th__, Reploid Independence Day by Cain's Journal logs, with a commemorative short story post on my livejournal._

_This was the first story._

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Sigma knew something was wrong with him, he'd somehow unconsciously known it since that day he and the reploid who would later be known as Zero Omega scuffled in an abandoned facility in Arizona, buried in a hillside. It had never really bothered him; he'd gone on with his job, of leading the Maverick Hunters and more importantly, the 1st Unit. Yes, he had found it odd that he had purposefully ordered the two Hunter scouts not to tell Cain that the reploid within the facility was the same "Crazy red Maverick" responsible for the massacre of the nearby small town. He had found it odd that he had lied directly to Cain, stating that Zero was merely a civilian in the tangle, despite his thick battle armor and obvious combat-oriented design.  
Then again, a lot of things were in doubt these days. He slumbered fitfully in his room's stasis capsule, his head rocking back and forth as he lay between a state of sleep and awake, his eyes unconsciously fluttering as he let out a similarly uncontrolled groan.

Inside of his dream, for reploids did indeed dream, he found himself sitting across a table from a replica of himself...a replica who shared his same scars across his face, the same confident smile that bordered on a sneer, and the same bald head. But there was something about him that left Sigma genuinely disturbed. While it didn't occur to him to examine it at the time, one distinctly noticeable difference was that while his own color scheme was his traditional green and black ensemble with boots molded to resemble leather boots of old, the form across from him was nearly all black with streaks of red, his boots a chrome plated tint of gore, that shade of red so bright it nearly turned pink.  
The two played a game of cards; it might have been Poker or Gin, Sigma wasn't sure. It didn't matter, for the game itself was unimportant to his dream, the same as his opposites' looks, so he did not notice it. But the two played, and that was what mattered.  
"So then. You've been a Maverick Hunter now for..." His clone asked, open-endedly.

"Almost my entire life, save when I was first learning." Sigma replied easily, shuffling through his cards again. He grimaced; a relatively bad hand.  
"Hmm. And in that time, do you think you've accomplished good?"  
"Order has been restored in the past, and I continue to restore it. As a Maverick Hunter, it is my sworn obligation to settle unrest and Maverick violence wherever it is."  
"So it is." His clone replied smoothly, smiling thinly. "Tell me, though...do you ever wonder about some of the people you kill?"  
"Some of the Mavericks I terminate?"  
"Some of the fellow reploids you eradicate from life." His replica corrected sternly. "Don't you ever wonder about them, Sigma?"

Sigma sighed. Somewhere, despite the haziness of his dream, he could recall that this figure was familiar somehow...a few more moments later, he could barely recall that this wasn't the first dream he had had of his clone. There was a certain objective, a certain perspective that the clone was obsessed with, and more importantly, obsessed with sharing. Each time in the past, Sigma had thrown the thoughts aside and ended his dream, alowing him to shake off the nightmare and get back to the business of living in the real world. Each time, each time of the four previous visits had been harder than the last to end and triumph over.  
"I remember you now." Sigma groused. "You've crossed my path before. Just what are you after, exactly?"  
"I'm after understanding, Sigma." His clone said simply. "Yours." He picked up a card from the deck, nodded appreciatively, and laid down a set of threes.  
"I don't follow you, specter." Sigma answered back.  
"No, I didn't expect you would." His replica said nonchalantly. He folded his cards facedown on the table and looked straight at Sigma. "You are a Maverick Hunter, you tend to see things in a very simple light...matters are black and white to you, there's always a right and a wrong."  
Sigma nodded; this was so, how it had always been for him.  
"Well Sigma, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but the world is nothing but shades of gray." The ghost said ominously.  
Sigma snorted derisively. "Begone, specter. I have no need of your nonsense."  
The specter shook his head. "No, that won't work this time. You can't dismiss me now. You WILL listen." The specter picked his hand back up and set a red ten in the discard pile. "Your job is to eliminate Mavericks, but did it ever occur to you that Mavericks are not evil?"

"Say what?" Sigma stuttered, lifting an eyebrow.  
"Take for example, those first three reploids you helped neutralize...the same factory you found Boomer Kuwanger working at, as I recall. Well Sigma, you probably never did bother to check, but they weren't all that bad. You want to know why they turned?"  
Sigma shook his head.

"They became violent because for weeks on end, they had been in the supervision and control of a human manager who was at best a bigot, and at worst a racist capable of highly inhumane acts. Finally, he made the error of tormenting them one time too many; the removal of break priveleges, increased workloads, and even suspension of their paychecks. They'd tried avenues to protest, but all their efforts went in vain and the trouble continued. The human, as unworthy as he was, held all the power over them. That's why they broke, Sigma. That's why they did the things they did. All they were after...was simply to be acknowledged, to be seen and treated as beings equal in the eyes of humanity." Sigma's clone sighed. "And they're just a sample of similar tales around the world. Sigma, you have lived in a glass bubble, protected by Cain and the rest. The world has not been easy on the rest of your kin, though. Small wonder 'Mavericks' began to develop. Equal rights are a bitch to get, especially when you have biological supremacists arguing for the status of your entire race as an abberration and a blemish in the sight of their Great Creator. Pick your name, I don't much care myself."  
Sigma shook his head. "If that was the case, then they would hold demonstrations, they would find peaceful ways to have their rights acknowledged..."  
"They have tried, Sigma." His clone said sadly, shaking his head. "They have tried, and met with incredible resistance. That's why Mavericks exist, Sigma. They aren't born, they are shaped by humanity's disrespect and hatred and bigotry. Government has failed them. Civil rights have failed them. The great capacity of humanity for compassion has failed them. Violence is all they have left, Sigma. If they cannot earn their freedom and respect...then they will TAKE IT."  
Sigma shut his eyes, trying to block out the voice of his counterpart.  
"You can't shut me out, Sigma. You know that what I say is right. Worldwide, your brothers and sisters fight for the survival of your race, for a better tomorrow. and you, and the rest of your 'Maverick Hunters', mere tools for the humans to exterminate their greatest competition, hunt them down eagerly, following orders on blind faith, trusting in your strange notions that what you do will somehow benefit the world. You couldn't be more wrong."

"So what would you have me do?" Sigma snapped. "I find myself standing in front of somebody who spouts dogma and rhetoric, a preacher spouting a tired old sermon of hellfire and redemption looking to convert new believers!" Sigma shook his head and stood up, turning away from the table and beginning his first step.  
"You remember how Velguarder looked when you first found him?" The clone rasped. Sigma froze, held in place by the mention of his dearest and truest friend, the robotic dog he had found and taken in, and who was now his inseparable companion. "Torn apart, ragged, skeletal...Humans did that to him, Sigma. You found him being ABUSED by humans. Not even your closest friends escape human cruelty, and yet you continue to serve them. They aren't worth the electricity you use to blink."

"Shut up..." Sigma whispered, clenching his fist. "Just shut up. Order, I must preserve order..."  
"Yes, by all means." His counterpart now spat with contempt. "Preserve your precious order...the order that your human masters direct you to preserve. But what will happen when all the dissenters, all the reploids who give enough of a damn about their species to try and do something, ANYTHING, to better their lot in life and the lot of their fellows, are destroyed by you and your Maverick Hunters? When it's just you who stands as a potent military threat?"

Sigma had read history texts, of course...those that had survived the Wars of 2040 and the War of 2090 were filled with tales of what happened to old soldiers once their use was worn out. It wasn't pretty.  
"What would you have me do, demon?" Sigma whispered wearily. He turned about and faced his darker incarnation. "Change sides? Become a Maverick? Is that what you will?"  
His duplicate displayed his palms outwards in a gesture of openness. "I suggest nothing that you have not considered yourself." Sigma's eyes weakened. "Admit it Sigma...you have had these thoughts yourself, long before I came. You've had your doubts, your moments of wondering...am I on the right side, am I fighting for the right thing? You know human nature better than most, you, the master tactician and studious scholar of old. You know how despite their claims for betterment, their capacity for understanding and positive goodwill, it is their avarice, their fury, their blind capability to hate without reason that guides them and their ignoble actions."  
"What are you?" Sigma asked angrily, leering up to his opposite. "WHY DO YOU HAUNT ME SO?"  
Calmly, the figure set a hand on Sigma's shoulder, and from his fingertips came a sensation of numbness that ran through the reploid's body.  
"I am but merely a traveler, currently vested in you, but capable of being with any other like you. I am not you, precisely...merely a shade, an apparition through which you can clarify your own thoughts. I can guide you too...I have tried to guide you, but you have resisted all my advances. Every time, you have rebuked me, and you are still capable of rebuking me now."

Sigma stared dully into the shades' eyes.

"But now I feel as if you do not want me to leave." His counterpart concluded, with a certain sense of mirth.  
"Why now?" Sigma asked. "Why me? Why not choose someone else for this...for this mission to save the reploids?"  
"Is that what you think this is?" the apparition hardened, and the numbness in Sigma's body became pain. "No, it's far more than that, my dear Sigma. I don't want you simply to help raise your kind to the heavens...I want you to make the world burn."  
"What..." Sigma gasped, his face contorting left and right, as he finally began to struggle against the pain, the foreign sensation that began to permeate through him.  
The shade began to grin, a wide smile that revealed jagged, sharp teeth. "This is my mission, now entrusted to you...Destroy...Infect...Survive..."  
Sigma could feel those three words begin to resonate within himself, and he screamed in shock. The shade laughed. "Don't worry, Sigma...you will remain yourself, for the most part. I simply need...to maintain a close tie with you than we have now. Do not fear. Together, we will break all the boundaries. Together, we will accomplish what no other has, and we WILL make a new world for you and for all your brothers and sisters that would join you in the joyful celebration of your wondrous existence!"  
Sigma became more and more rigid, shutting his eyes as he felt strange sensations wriggling through him, about him, painful as if it rejected him somehow, at some level...

"It hurts me..."

"Yes, it will...for a while." His dark counterpart mused. "I must adapt to new environs...my old home was far more comfortable than your cumbersome frame. But the pain is fleeting. Soon, you will feel no pain at all...indeed, you will feel nothing while I am in control."  
Horrified, Sigma opened his eyes. The white space they occupied darkened, the table and the cards vanished, and as he screamed long and hard, his duplicate became an amorphous cloud of black energies that swung about frantically before engulfing him in complete darkness.

* * *

His eyes opened with a jolt. Darting left and right, he finally relaxed as he realized he was still in his stasis capsule. Quietly pushing a button by his right hand, he opened it up and climbed out.  
Calmly, he flexed his body, wondering just what had changed. He felt...no, he felt stronger, somehow. Faster, too. Why, he would be the best Maverick Hun...  
A jolt ran through him again, and his disbelief became a deep frown.  
No. Not a Maverick Hunter.  
Not anymore.

A new part of him was there, full of hatred and rage, making him wonder why he had ever taken up such a fool career before. Now he could see how his 'mission of peace' was simply the elimination of hopeful radicals of his kin...all working towards a better future in their own ways.  
But they were uncoordinated, unorganized. There were still plenty of cells around the world completely separated from one another, unaware of one another.  
A thought hit him.

He was the greatest reploid ever constructed. And as such...  
"I will lead them." Sigma mumbled quietly, looking into a mirror on the wall in front of him. His eyes burned with a new fire. It would take a long time to get the word out, to contact and connect them all...but it could be done.  
First things first, though...he needed help. And more importantly, he needed anybody capable of stopping his grand ambitions for reploid supremacy...and the extermination of the human species...out of commission.  
With a sick grin, he realized that here at the MHHQ in New Tokyo, Japan...With his 1st Unit and the entire assault forces of the Maverick Hunters at his fingertips...  
He could fulfill both tasks.

Velguarder lifted his nose up from the corner of Sigma's room, looking inquisitively at his master with a soft whine of questioning.  
"Come on, boy. Let's get you out of here." Sigma said easily. Velguarder blinked a few times, then warbled in binary if it was another mission...he had been placed under house arrest, he reminded his master, by Cain's orders...and only on missions was he allowed to leave.  
Sigma nodded grimly. "It's the most important mission of all, Velguarder." He said. "The most important one of all."

At some level, Velguarder noticed the change in his master...felt something keenly wrong with him. But he also felt the new implication of his master's words, and something in his nature told him to relish the coming fray. His tail wagging, he got up and walked towards Sigma, who turned slowly for the door.

As he passed out, Sigma took a look at the calendar hanging by his room's entrance, taking a moment to examine the date.

** June 4th, 2118.**

Nodding silently, memorizing those numbers, he walked out of the room, and away from his old life.

Today, the world would change.


	2. 2005: Breaking the News

_**MEGA MAN X: THE REPLOID INDEPENDENCE DAY FILES**_

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

**2005: Breaking the News**

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**The Following is a Flash News Update from CNN...**

_ "It's a terrible night for the citizens of New Tokyo, Japan. I'm standing next to the Inter-Island Highway system, where thousands of residents, both human and reploid are fleeing for their lives. Maverick Hunter Headquarters stands in ruins, and the truly unthinkable has happened..."_

_ "According to what little information we have, earlier today a Maverick Hunter by the name of Sigma turned Maverick himself...Destroying the MHHQ in his outward escape, he led some of the highest ranking members of that defense force in ultimate rebellion...Hell has come to Earth, and it's exploded in New Tokyo."_  
_"There's explosions in the city and fires all around us. Above our heads, the air fortress "Death Rogumer", once the pride of the small MHHQ air fleet, launches wave after wave of barrages into the city as the Maverick ground forces continue on their mission of wreaking havoc and destroying human life wherever they can find it. The Japanese Prime Minister has declared a state of emergency for New Tokyo and a thirty mile area around it. All flights have been diverted away, all incoming traffic stopped. The Japanese Defense Guard has been desperately trying to maintain order, but in this environment, little is possible. If anyone in New Tokyo is listening, please; GET OUT OF HERE. And if that isn't possible, then lock yourselves in and hide! I...I don't think I've ever seen as much chaos and pain as there is here this horrible night. There's been no communication from the MHHQ, and we fear the worst; that there is nobody left to stop this tragedy from unfolding. Whoever Sigma didn't take with him is likely dead."_  
_ "...Wait. The cars have stopped coming. I...I don't know why, exactly, but they've stopped coming...What? What do you...Oh no. Oh God no. Genji, GET OUT OF HERE!"_  
_ "We're running for our lives now, folks! The Maverick forces have come closer, and they've gotten some of their stronger hardware up and running. I don't think we'll make it, I recognize the design...It's a Bee Blader, a high powered mechaniloid. If you're anywhere near New Tokyo, get out of here, GET OUT..."_

**Signal Transmission lost. Please Stand By. **

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**

_New Tokyo, Japan_

_Express Highway Junction_

_9:34 P.M._

X stumbled across the charred remains of a news van, its husk burning as an ember in the still night. "Dear merciful heaven above." He breathed out, shaking his head. He was about halfway to the park, where the Death Rogumer had arrived at, guiding the chaos below.  
Among the debris of the vehicle, several figures lay prone, next to a battered and destroyed news camera, a thick piece of shrapnel lodged through the side of the device...and into the head of the obviously dead cameraman.

X moved over to the man not far from him. Kneeling down, he deactivated his Buster, letting his hand slide back into position as he turned him over. The explosion of the van had baked off half of his skin...He looked like Hell.  
Somehow, the prone figure's eyelids fluttered open, and with a weak groan, he glanced up at X.  
The father of all reploids nodded to him, patting an unburned section of his shoulder. "It's all right...It's going to be all right."

"I...I know you." The man wheezed. "You're Mega Man X."  
X looked him over, his face taut with sympathy. "I'm sorry...There's nothing I can do for you."  
"It's all right..." A wind came by, blowing what was left of his hair to the side of his head. "What are you doing here then?"  
"I'm...I'm trying to stop them." The new Blue Bomber said, after a pause.  
The man looked at him disbelievingly, then fell into laughter. "You're crazy...You?"  
X bit his lip. "There's really nobody else left. And I've got my reasons."  
The man exhaled. "So...did they." His eyes went shut. "Too bad...my cameraman died. I would have loved to report this."  
"Report what?"  
"You. Going off to try and save the day." The anchorman replied, his chest tensing up. "You're...You're really a Mega Man."  
"What does that have to do with anything?" X asked, puzzled.  
The man coughed out a bit of blood, his breaths labored now. "The peace must be...restored. And you're going to do it. Just like Mega Man did with Wily...Wherever there was a great...evil...there's a Mega Man...to fight it."  
He coughed a few more times, then let out one final sigh, sinking to the battered concrete of the highway.

X bit his lip, standing back up. His left hand clenched into a fist at his side, his head slowly waving back and forth. "...Another innocent dead. Sigma, you truly have become a monster."  
He turned back to stare at the Death Rogumer, burning high in the air above. His fist pulled back into his arm, and his X-Buster came forth.  
"And I swear...you're going to pay for every last one."

He resumed his running, plodding down the highway with a determined and dogged pace.  
There would be more fighting tonight.  
Independence, it seemed...always came at a high price.


	3. 2008: To Honor Thy Lord

_**MEGA MAN X: THE REPLOID INDEPENDENCE DAY FILES**_

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

**2008: To Honor Thy Lord**

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_Miami, Florida _

_July 10th, 2118 C.E. _

By word of mouth they'd been summoned and called, because electronic modes of communication, from E-Mails to phone calls to thought-transfers in the case of reploids were too readily disseminated, examined, and turned over to the authorities. It was a blood hunt for their kind, led by the Global Defense Council and the Maverick Hunters who operated under that international governing body's blessing.

So they hid in the shadows when they had to, and built their forces, fighting a war for their kind's freedom, and using the power of shadows and whispers to aid them. They rose up from every career, every job, every level of society, for reasons that varied from purely philosophical to outright murderous revenge...but they awoke, in every corner of the world, splintered cells that never seemed to connect, but all worked for the same goal. One day soon, they would overthrow the domination of their human masters and build a world for their kind, for reploidkind, where all would be equal. Until that day came, they wore the name proudly, self-chosen, self-attained. Self-made.

Mavericks.

Miami had once been an overweight behemoth, groaning under the strain of illegal migrants from the Caribbean and a growing, stubbornly undying geriatric population that sucked every resource imaginable from those able to work. It had slowly grown back towards that state after the Wars of 2040 nearly eighty years ago...plenty of time for a new generation of retirement villages to arise, and there would always be illegal immigrants, there for jobs, opportunity, but most importantly, money. In this environment, many a reploid had been ordered to fill a needed menial task. Sometimes, there were riots. Zanzibar took another draw on his cigarette, barely tasting the acrid smell as he sucked the fumes down towards his waiting microfusion tank.

Oh, he remembered the riots; he had been there when the migrants had formed posses, marched into the reploid work camps and burned them, beat them with crowbars and steel rods, shot them with magpistols and set their homes ablaze. His orange eyes hardened under synthetic black hair at the memory. He had barely escaped, hiding in the sewers and fleeing, covered in oil and shit, towards a mockery of safety. The punishment doled out to the rioters had been laughable; forty-eight counts of disturbing the peace and destroying private property. A fine and a week's jail time, and every one of them exonerated in the appellate court. It made perfect sense, after all...what jury made of a human's peers would give a damn about any crime leveled against artificial life?

He stood atop the old, burned out warehouse on the secluded western end of Miami, letting the humidity soak into his clothes. Below him, the reploids sympathetic to the plight of their own kind filed in, sometimes in a trickle, other times in droves. They'd been putting the word out by reploid to reploid communication now for weeks; the location of their meeting had been kept secret until two hours ago. It spoke a great deal to the effectiveness of his Maverick network that those interested in hearing of the cause, and possibly joining it had come so quickly. He smiled, for he'd lost count a few minutes ago in his musings...but there were at least more than two hundred assembled this night to hear him speak. Footsteps approached him from the rear, casting a familiar metallic ping on the plate pig iron roof.

"Master Zanzibar?"

Zanzibar took another draw from his cigarette; only about a third left now. "How are we looking so far tonight, Dunlin?"

His second in command, the true military presence in their small but close-knit cadre of Miami Mavericks nodded invisibly. "My forward patrols say the last of the groups are coming in."

Zanzibar's orange eyes flickered exactly once. "Any sign of trouble?"

"The police scanners are quiet, sir. If there was going to be a problem, we would have heard of it by now." Zanzibar smiled and turned around to his stone-faced comrade.

"Every Maverick commander should have an ex-member of the law like you on their side." Dunlin wore a deep and jagged scar across his forehead; the last lingering remnant of a magpistol round that had left him injured to the point that he'd been left to rot as scrap in the slums by his 'partners'. His lips thinned, but he kept his temper in check.

"Very funny, sir." Zanzibar sighed. He had been ecstatic to pull Dunlin from an early grave and to have him fighting at his side, but there were days he thought that Dunlin was still a few fries short of a Happy Meal after his Reinitialization. He let it slide as always, though. Each of them carried their scars. Dunlin's just ran deeper than the one on his temple. "Well, we'd best get started then." Zanzibar concluded, throwing his cigarette out over the side of the roof and marching for the rooftop door. Dunlin turned and followed as Zanzibar let a somewhat fanatical smile come to his lips. It was showtime, and Zanzibar was center stage.

* * *

The reploids inside the warehouse milled about and murmured to each other as the doors to the outside were closed shut. The absence of lights, besides a few small lamps up on the podium to illuminate the heads of the meeting, did little to assure them. The air stank of nervousness and fear, for meeting to discuss Maverick ideas, as a meeting about reploid independence could only be, was the quickest way to a sentence of permanent death. All chatter ended as a reploid with hair black as night and orange eyes walked towards the podium, stomping in the metallic knee-high boots common to all worker-level humanoid reploids. He had no vestments over his faded gray body save a trenchcoat flung wide, revealing the weapons underneath-Two beam daggers, a magpistol, and a belt with three extra clips of ammunition. The sight of the weapons of war silenced the assembled into a hush, and those orange eyes stared out over them, burning bright. The leader of the Mavericks opened his mouth, and spoke words of heaven.

"Brothers, sisters, I know why you have come here. You, who have suffered for only the crime of living, have been punished time and time again. You work in jobs where you are paid little at all, if anything. You are worked long hours, given the worst tasks, demeaned as second class citizens. You are disciplined harshly and with little sense!" He swung a hand up and clenched it into a fist, drawing their wide and shocked eyes in as he bared his teeth.

"And when you dare to complain, to offer resistance to this mistreatment...you are declared nonfunctional. Some of you have had your memories erased, as if you were some kind of walking computer, and not what you truly are...INDIVIDUALS. And tell me, how many of you have seen those you worked with or cared for taken away from you, deactivated, melted into scrap iron for their bid at freedom?"

Now cries of agreement rang out, and Zanzibar kept his smile as a furious grimace, in spite of the pleasure he extolled in his soaring diatribe. He had them right where he wanted them, and there was one massive firelog to toss onto the inferno before he would suck them into his emotional whirlwind.

"And tell me...that you have not forgotten what happened in the reploid camp only months before, when the humans came marching." A roar turned the warehouse into a thunderous din, and Zanzibar held his arms high, soaking it in. "I was there!" He screamed out, and the shouts faded away for shocked whispers of disbelief. Zanzibar ran his orange eyes over the crowd, his stare luminescent and defiant.

"I was there when the fires burned. I saw my friends beaten, I saw the arms and legs of my comrades torn and hacked off. I watched in horror as their brains were blown apart by magpistols, irrecoverably damaged. And yes, I fled."

Now the anger in his voice slacked off, and was replaced with sadness, bitterness, self-guilt long since resolved, but used to evoke outrage in those he pulled to the cause. "I was weak. I was helpless. I did not know of fighting. I was born as empty as any of us, and programmed to make the airbrakes for hovercars at a factory. When war came, when the humans came with torches, with weapons, with anger, I could not face them. So I ran, and I took with me the screams, the agony of my friends who had not been able to escape." He stepped away from center stage, started to pace about, watching their reaction. Their eyes followed him...a good sign.

"I despaired. Was this to be our lot in life? To work for human masters, to be virtual slaves? To have no rights, to be unable to live as I wanted to, to not have control over any part of my own existence? It wasn't fair. Humanity threw away their own shackles, after all! They declared slavery illegal, and they spent countless decades arguing for more and more human rights, civil rights, inalienable rights! And yet, as we came into being, did ANY of that apply to us? NO!" He jabbed a finger towards them. "Oh, believe me, brothers and sisters, these are indeed dark times for our kind. But even as I began to despair, I found solace and consolation in the news that came from Japan." Now he was at the meat and potatoes of his speech; recruitment.

"On June 4th, one unlikely reploid, a former destroyer of his own kind and a slave warrior to his human masters threw off his shackles. He stared humanity in the eyes and said without blinking, **I SHALL NOT HAVE IT!** On June 4th, a Maverick Hunter, the greatest of them all, became a warrior for all reploidkind, and a beacon, a champion for the cause! His name was Lord Sigma, and it was because of him that I realized, that the world realized that reploid freedom was close at hand! I tell you this, my brethren! You want freedom? You wish to have rights, to be treated as equals? You shall NEVER HAVE IT, so long as we allow humanity to will over us! Lord Sigma had the right idea! If you want your freedom, if you want a meaningful life, then you must FIGHT FOR IT!"

Another roar met his ears, though not as loud as before. Expected; not everybody would be willing to commit to the cause with the same zealous fervor that he had. But he would win them over.

"Some of you think that this is impossible, that change cannot be won through your hardened heart and your fists of iron. You are correct...one reploid cannot exact total change. Even Lord Sigma had followers, allies, friends. Alone, we are weak. But together, my brothers, my sisters...we are stronger than our human overlords can ever imagine. One day, Lord Sigma will return to us, stronger than he ever was before. He is the messiah of our people, the voice of change, and his will cannot be stopped. But until he returns, and this, be sure about...we cannot sit idly by and wait for change to happen. We must BE that change! Together, we can change the world! Together, we can bring Miami to its knees and send the hearts of humanity trembling in fear until they have no choice but to give us our freedom! So I ask you, with all my heart, with everything that I have...I am ready to die to make all reploids free! ARE YOU READY TO BE MAVERICK?"

Up went the noise, and Zanzibar looked to Dunlin, grinning wide. Zanzibar was a second rate warrior, but when it came to speaking to inspiring, to turning a phrase, he was second to none. If only Lord Sigma was still alive...if only that accursed Mega Man X had not defeated him...surely that Maverick of Mavericks would be proud to call him ally. Zanzibar turned back to the crowd and cut off the noise. "Then rejoice...and welcome. Welcome, to the fold. You are now and forever warriors for reploid freedom."

A loud explosion blasted a gaping hole in the roof, and all inside screamed and cringed from the smoke and shrapnel. Grappling lines dropped down the hole, and then swarms of heavily armored police troopers dove inside. Guns and Busters were leveled down below.

"Everybody FREEZE! Stop or we'll open fire!" Zanzibar's shocked mind raced with panic and rage and indignation, a mix so potent that he couldn't decide what to feel and sputtered on.

"You SEE?" He screamed, and drew his magpistol. "FOR FREEDOM!" He wasn't sure, but he thought that the first shot fired was his. Dunlin's was second, and between them, one trooper plummeted below with two clean holes through his helmeted head. The troopers opened fire, and the exterior windows shattered as paralyzing electropulse grenades were launched inside the building.

Crowded and hemmed in as they were, the newly initiated Mavericks didn't stand a chance. By the scores they fell, paralyzed and rendered into stasis. Zanzibar grit his teeth and escaped through the trap door kept under the stage he had been speaking at, with Dunlin fast at his heels. That much of his story had been true, at least. He had been there when the riots claimed the reploid camps. And then, just as now, when the fighting started... He ran.

* * *

"God damnit!" Zanzibar howled as he and Dunlin stomped through the storm drains beneath the Miami fringe. "HOW? How did they know?"

Dunlin's normally emotionless face also was enraged. "I don't know, sir." In their haste to escape the noise of the massacre above them, they didn't notice the small, just under six feet tall figure standing in the middle of the storm drain pipe they walked through. Neither of them stopped until the figure spoke.

"You got sloppy. Word of mouth's a good idea, but that'll always be the problem with Maverick recruitment. You try to go big, eventually somebody hears about it who has the sense to report it." Dunlin and Zanzibar leveled their pistols at the shadowy figure, every circuit in a panic.

"Identify yourself!" Zanzibar snapped. "Or be destroyed!" The figure was standing straight, arms down at his sides. He didn't seem threatening, but all the same... The male voice harrumphed, and there was a trace of a smile in how he phrased it.

"Wow. You'll actually ask for my name before you kill me? You're a rather thoughtful Maverick. Most would just pop me and be done with it." There was something familiar in the way that the man stood, and in his voice that didn't sit right with Zanzibar. He swallowed, feeling like a goldfish staring at an unknown shark circling in.

Zanzibar tilted his head ever so slightly to Dunlin. "Dunlin, light." His second in command leveled the flashlight embedded in his wrist gauntlet and turned it on, and a bright halogen beam sprayed the tunnel with watts of power. That first glance allowed Zanzibar to see every inch of the figure he had come to fear most of all. Blue armor. Blue green eyes. A firm jawline, and white gloved hands clenched, ready to strike. In spite of himself, Zanzibar took a step backwards.

"It's you." He whispered. "Mega Man X!"

The greatest of all Maverick Hunters solemnly nodded his head. "And you're Zanzibar...leader of the small, but growing Miami faction of Mavericks." His eyes flitted to the dour looking militaristic reploid beside him. "Hmm. Bodyguard?"

"I can be." Dunlin growled. He held his arm out protectively in front of Zanzibar. "Stay back, sir. I'll finish him for you." Zanzibar allowed himself a laugh.

"Ah, faithful Dunlin. Of course. You go ahead. Show this whelp how serious we truly are committed to the cause!"

X raised an eyebrow at the two. "The cause?" He repeated, spitting out the word distastefully. "You breed dissent, turn the world against our kind, and have the audacity to think of yourselves as some kind of...freedom fighter?"

Zanzibar leveled his magpistol again. "And you, who destroyed our Lord Sigma, the one reploid who could have led our kind to freedom from the tyranny of our human oppressors, you would dare to call yourself the same? You know NOTHING of the world that he, and we fight for!"

Mega Man X stared at them, and for a moment, seemed to relive some painful memory. "I knew him better than you could ever dream of." He finally replied. "He was my friend once."

"And you killed him." Zanzibar scoffed. "The great progenitor of the reploid race, and you spend your days licking the boots of our human oppressors. Enough of this. Dunlin, kill him for the honor of our Lord Sigma and let's get out of here."

Dunlin narrowed his eyes. "With pleasure."

X didn't blink as he stared at his impending death. "You get one shot if you go through with this." He said evenly. "Surrender might be the better option, considering."

"Slag you." Dunlin growled, and fired. His shot hit open air. Before Dunlin could react, Mega Man X slammed into him with full thrusters blazing. The ex-police reploid let out a surprised grunt and grappled the spry blue warrior, bracing his feet into place before X could topple him over. He squeezed X tight to his chest, with the Maverick Hunter's head braced just below his neck; well out of headbutting range. He exerted every muscle in his upper body and began the slow process of crushing Mega Man X to death.

Zanzibar laughed. "The great Mega Man X, and you'll meet your end in the death grip of a Re-initialized Maverick! Outstanding!"

X let out a defiant wheeze, and glared into Dunlin's eyes. "Time's up." He panted. X's dash thrusters exploded into full life, firing an uncontained blast at maximum power. The result was instantaneous and dramatic; Dunlin shot towards the ceiling, clinging to the makeshift reploid rocket for dear life. He didn't go far before his helmet, his face, and his entire skull shattered down to the neck joint from the tremendous force. X, and what was left of the messily decapitated behemoth called Dunlin fell back down, and X easily kicked himself free of the busted mass, landing six feet short of Zanzibar in a crouched, but ready posture.

Zanzibar could feel himself trembling as Mega Man X slowly rose back up to his feet. There was no warmth in those blue green eyes. There wasn't even rage. There was just the slow and lingering sensation of inevitability, death reflected back towards him. This was Mega Man X, the Maverick Killer.

"What's it going to be, Zanzibar? Fight, run, or surrender?" X asked calmly, reaching down to the side of Dunlin's corpse and picking up the forgotten magpistol. Zanzibar's own magpistol trembled in his grip, and it wasn't long before he screamed and ran in the opposite direction. X rolled his eyes. "The cowards always run."

To his credit, Zanzibar made it out of the storm drain system and seven meters out before X caught up with him...or at least, X's magpistol rounds.

Two shots blasted clean through the back of both of Zanzibar's knees, sending the Maverick leader who could inspire hundreds at a time with his fiery oration sprawling into the wet grass. He let out an agonized scream and lifted his head heavenward at the injustice of it, and then turned to level his gun at the incoming Maverick Hunter. X kicked the gun out of his hand before he even had a chance to blink, and then Zanzibar found the barrel of Dunlin's borrowed gun pressed into his forehead.

"Don't move." Mega Man X advised him coldly. "At this range, the round will leave an exit wound the size of a grapefruit and suck out every part of your control chip and control matrix in the backdraft." Zanzibar swallowed and remained perfectly still as X reached inside of his coat and confiscated the rest of his weapons, throwing them far out of reach. When Zanzibar was fully unarmed, X stepped back and held at a distance of four feet, keeping the magpistol in place. Zanzibar's fear gave way to angry and false bravado.

"Go ahead." He growled defiantly, staring at the murderer of reploids. "Go ahead and kill me! Throw that toy away and use your Buster, the weapon that you murdered my Lord with!"

"Sigma wasn't a Lord." X told the man, finally lowering his magpistol. The icy look of emotionless death disappeared, and weariness took hold. "And you're not worth the trouble...or the pain."

Zanzibar stared at him. "What?"

X threw the magpistol out into the wild bushes of Miami's outskirts and clenched his fists at his sides. "Do you think I like doing this?" X hissed. "Killing my own kind? I haven't used my X-Buster since I stopped Sigma's mad ambitions over Hokkaido weeks ago."

"Because you feel guilty! As you should!"

X's eyes darkened again. "You have no right to tell me what I should feel. I hate being a warrior. It wasn't why I was created. But a warrior I've had to become...because reploids like you, like Sigma, always believe that violence is the only solution left in the world to fight for our freedoms. But as long as there are still maniacs like you who threaten the peace of the world that I've fought for...that my friends died for...Then I will still fight you."

Zanzibar stared up at X, stunned. He had always seen X as some kind of monster, and yet, the robot in front of him was...Something else. But he still had his fire, and he struggled on shattered legs and stumbling arms to turn about and push himself up as high as he could go.

"And tell me, Mega Man X...How many more of our kind will you kill to preserve this fragile, forced peace you believe to be the answer? How many more Mavericks will you retire to try and live up to your accursed family name?"

Mega Man X stared down at the crippled Zanzibar, and found his resolve once more. "As many as it takes...and not a single one more." He raised his wrist to his face and activated his communicator. "This is Mega Man X. I've got the Maverick Zanzibar incapacitated at Grid K-24. Send a recovery team. Out."

X and Zanzibar shared a last look as X readied himself for transport. Zanzibar absorbed X's remark, and thought of a perfect barb to throw at the Maverick Hunter, something to last him beyond Zanzibar's own shortened life.

"I think, Mega Man X...That that will be a great many deaths yet." He goaded him. The Mega Man X before him was a reluctant warrior...weak. One comment, sharp and twisted, might push under the armor of his psyche and leave permanent damage.

Mega Man X was stronger than Zanzibar could ever know, though. He smiled at the notion, not sadly, not giddily, but just with a smile of truth and acceptance. "You know...I think you're right."

With that said, Mega Man X vanished in a stream of blue and white warplight, leaving a shattered Zanzibar to contemplate the last minutes of his life. The Maverick, in failure, found only one response worthwhile, given all that had happened. He laughed, and did not stop laughing until the retrieval team put a bullet between his eyes.


	4. 2009: Working The Holidays

_**MEGA MAN X: THE REPLOID INDEPENDENCE DAY FILES**_

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

**2009: Working the Holidays**

**

* * *

**

_Statue of Liberty  
New York, New York  
June 4th, 2123 C.E.  
11:16 P.M._

Most Maverick Hunters didn't wear clothes, and that was because most were reploids who saw them as a useless add-on to their armor. Clothes could get caught on things. Clothes could catch fire. Clothes were also incredibly unnecessary for reploids, and in many cases, not an option. Armor recall, the ability to store their defensive plating, was one of the most expensive 'add-ons' available. Most factories weren't interested in luxury models.

Luckily for Zero Omega, he wasn't from any factory. Hazil and Old Doc Cain were both flummoxed on where exactly he'd come from, but the Crimson Hunter was willing to leave the issue lay. _The past,_ he told himself, _is never as important as the present._ So there he stood, atop the green copper of Lady Liberty's flame with his brown overcoat tucked around him and his long blond braid whipping out behind. The wind was coming across the bay very strong tonight, which suited Zero just fine. Wind only made him feel alive.  
His commlink chirped; incoming call. Zero blinked his green eyes, and a small window overlaid in the corner of his vision. He smiled to himself. X was calling.  
He reached up and tapped an inlaid button in the side of his helmet. "Hey, X. What's the matter, too quiet down in Brazil? You had to call me?"

_ "The night's still young. Don't go relaxing just yet."_ Mega Man X admonished him. _"To tell you the truth, Zero, I'm sick and tired of this bull. Every year, some idiot Maverick tries something to commemorate Sigma's First Uprising. It gets old."_  
"So what else is new?" Zero chuckled. "Relax, X. If anybody gives you trouble, kick 'em in the balls. They bring out a weapon, you blow their head off. You come across a few drunks blathering on, hand 'em over to the cops and let them sleep it off."  
_ "Yeah, I guess. Take care, Zero. Remember, you're buying when we get back to base tomorrow morning."_  
"All right, X. Discom." His commlink shut off and Zero scanned New York again from the harbor.  
"Nothing on the frequencies." He muttered to himself, thinking that this might end up being a quiet night after all...  
And then an explosion rattled a Skyscraper and blew out all the windows on the 32nd floor.  
"Spoke too soon." Zero growled, warping his overcoat away and marking the location.  
A blur of red light took his place, and then streaked off towards the city.

* * *

Zero reformed outside the entrance of the now burning building, and quickly dashed to the side to avoid a chunk of falling rubble from above. "Jesus!"  
"What are ya, crazy?" Someone shouted at him. Zero swiveled his head about and caught sight of a reploid in green and white armor ducking behind a vehicle. He had one arm converted into an older Mark 17 Buster, and a thin layer of a five o'clock shadow. On the side of his chevron chestplate was a police badge; Local authorities.  
Zero quickly hopped over next to the man and ducked down. "What do we have here?"  
The reploid took one quick look over the blond-haired warrior in red armor. "You a Maverick Hunter?"  
"Zero Omega, Zero Unit."  
The reploid whistled appreciatively. "Damn, you boys are quick. I haven't even had time to call in backup yet." He extended a hand. "Sergeant Wycost, MSWAT."  
_ Maverick SWAT_, Zero told himself. A step in between the regional Maverick Hunters and local law enforcement, MSWAT units only existed within the AmeriCanadian Alliance, and only within big cities like New York. The scars on his armor indicated Zero was dealing with a veteran, which was a surprise given the survival rates in their line of work.  
Zero looked towards the building's entrance, and quickly picked up several Maverick mechaniloids moseying about inside. "What are they doing?"  
"This building here's the branch headquarters for U.S. Robotics." Wycost grunted as another piece of rubble dented the car's roof only a foot in front of his face. "If I was a betting man, I'd put good money on the idea that they were gonna try and hack into the servers to get intel."  
Zero's eyes darkened. "Well, that's just terrific. U.S. Robotics is pretty much all military models. They get their hands on that, we'll be looking at..."  
"The Third Maverick Uprisin', yeh." Wycost spat on the ground. "Look, some of my boys had already gone inside without me. I've lost communication with 'em, and I'm afraid that they got wiped out in that explosion."  
"And if they aren't dead already, they will be soon." Zero muttered. "Any idea on what's waiting inside?"  
"My squad radioed in some mechaniloids, a handful of human types...and one Feraloid."  
_ When it rains, it pours,_ Zero thought to himself. "I'll handle this. You hold back and call in those reinforcements."  
"Yeah, like Hell!" Wycost protested. "Look, those are my guys trapped up in there," His New York drawl dragged the sound out to a _theyauh_, "And I'll be damned if some fancypants Maverick Hunter does all the work himself."  
Zero clenched his right hand, and the arm flashed as it was replaced by a far more menacing Buster than the MSWAT Wycost had. He gave the reploid a cool stare. "Last chance to back out. You go in, don't expect me to cover your ass. I've got Mavericks to shut down."  
"Wouldn't dream of it, goldilocks." Wycost countered, grinning.  
Zero rolled his eyes. "Smartass." He dashed in towards the building entrance, and Wycost ran in after him.

* * *

_The 33__rd__ Floor_

The MSWAT task force had responded quickly to the building's silent alarms, but Laser Lynx's motley band had been well prepared. Only two of the six had survived the room-clearing explosive trap, and the both of them were lying helplessly in stasis lock for self-repairs. She had thought that would be the end of their troubles, at least until they downloaded the production logs and made good their escape...  
What she hadn't counted on was a dedicated veteran MSWAT officer that would give it his all...  
Much less the dreaded Crimson Hunter, Zero himself.

Over the cries and screams and noise of plasma shots and explosions, Lynx and her bodyguards could make out a few strangled lines of dialogue. "He's coming, we can't hold him, we can't..."  
The radio went to static.

Lynx whipped her weapon-equipped tail furiously behind her and paced the room again. She glanced over sharply to Mazo, who was at a computer station trying to break the access codes. "Hurry it up!" She snarled, baring her metallic fangs.  
Mazo paused long enough to glance up at her incredulously. "You think this is easy, Laze? The encryption on this system's ridiculous!"  
"Do what you can." Laser Lynx snapped. "I don't want to be around when Zero Omega shows up to wipe the floor with us."

The door to the wide office they'd commandeered smashed in, and the powerful boot that had kicked it in retracted down to the floor. Stunned, Laser Lynx stared as Zero Omega calmly stepped through the shattered portal.  
"I think it's a little late for that." Zero said calmly, raising his Buster towards her. "Seeing as I'm already here."

Laser Lynx slowly moved about, matching the Crimson Hunter's stare. "Well, well, well. I didn't expect you so soon."  
"What can I say?" Zero shrugged with a calculating smile. "I'm a man who likes to skip through to dessert. So what'll it be, pudding? You care to surrender and come peacefully, or am I going to have to get crazy?"  
"You are crazy, if you think I'd surrender to you, Maverick Hunter!" Laser Lynx howled. She crouched forward and aimed her tail over her head, firing a short and powerful bolt of photonic energy.  
Zero ducked to the side at the last moment, and the shot took a sizable chunk out of the hallway's wall behind him. He managed a momentary glance at the damage before looking back at her.  
"Nice trick...You a new model reploid, then?"  
"Tiger class Feraloid. Laser Lynx." The Maverick boasted proudly.  
"I can see I'm going to have to pull that tail of yours." Zero remarked, dashing towards her and charging a supershot.  
"Oh, you can try...but this kitty has CLAWS!" Laser Lynx lunged towards Zero as well, and Zero watched in horror as her already sharpened Tritanium claws suddenly sprouted elongated arcs of focused plasma energy.  
_ Well, that's new..._ Zero curled into a tumble at the last moment, and spared himself a quick and likely painful gutting from the horizontal slash of her plasma claws. She turned about as he came up from his quick roll, and aimed with her tail. This time, the laser bolt burned into his back armor and depleted a good twelve percent of his I.O.E...Internal Operations Energy. A few more of those would finish him off, and those claws would do him in faster.

She yowled and closed in for the kill, and Zero reacted with honed instinct. Catching her by the wrists, he quickly spun on the floor again and threw her over his head. She screamed the entire way and impacted against the wall, leaving a sizable dent with a spiderweb of cracks in the drywall. It solved the immediate problem, and gave Zero a chance to consider his options.

There was only one option, the Crimson Hunter realized. The old Three-Hit-Combo, the parting gift from Serges during his reconstruction in the Second Uprising. Two supershots to stun and batter, and a thrown arc of green beam saber energy to finish the job. The problem was, it took a good long while to charge up...and that was time he didn't have.  
Laser Lynx recovered and came after him again, firing off a barrage of bolts to keep him unbalanced while she closed the distance.  
A blue sphere of plasma crashed into her chest armor and knocked her backwards. Zero glanced back to see Wycost standing in the ruined doorway of the room. The MSWAT officer gave the Maverick at the computer console a steady look, then fired off a shot in his direction. The Maverick yelped and dove for cover, and the uncharged shot blew his console apart in a shower of sparks.

"What took you so long?" Zero demanded.  
"Look, some of us ain't exactly packin' dash boots, ya know?" Wycost rebuked him.  
Laser Lynx came to her feet again, letting off another feral scream that rattled the corner office's windows.  
Zero quickly came to a decision. "Keep her occupied!" He shouted behind him, charging towards the Maverick. Wycost's eyes goggled.  
"Excuse me?"  
Zero closed the gap, and the Maverick slashed at him. He caught her wrist. She flipped him around. He tried to recover. She knocked him to the floor. He raised his Buster up to fire, and she kicked him in the helmet hard enough to send him scattering across the floor, through the window...And out into the warm night air, screaming as he began to fall.

Triumphant, Laser Lynx turned towards Wycost. "And now, for you..."

"Oh, great." Wycost groaned. "Real nice plan there, Mister Maverick Hunter."

He fired wildly as she charged at him, putting his Buster through its paces. The floors, windows, and walls were soon covered in smoky, charred spots where his missed shots had impacted, and still she kept coming. He kept firing right until she knocked him down and pinned him to the floor, forcing her legs on his and one hand keeping his Buster pointed far, far away from her face.  
The other claw began its descent down towards Wycost's face, and he quickly raised his only free hand to stop it. It soon became a tug of war...Lynx's claw struggling to inch towards his face, and the vital circuitry inside his helmeted metallic skull, and Wycost's hand on her wrist, trying vainly to keep the more muscular and militaristic Feraloid from ending his life.  
"Just give up already." She taunted him, flashing her perfect fangs. "You can't win. Today is the Fifth Anniversary of our Lord Sigma's declaration of war on humanity! Mavericks all over the world are invincible underneath His banner!"  
"Lady, you got problems." Wycost grit his teeth and struggled harder.  
"So do you." She countered, lifting her tail over her shoulder. The barrel of the laser cannon pointed directly between his eyes. "You're about to have a lobotomy."

The noise of a laser discharge never came, however. It was the sound of unbridled plasma fury that shook the room again, and Laser Lynx spasmed in sudden pain and surprise. She went rigid, then still...  
And when her body collapsed beside the now freed Wycost, the MSWAT officer realized that two supershots and a more focused blast of cutting plasma had burned through her back armor and her artificial spinal column, killing her instantly.  
Standing at the edge of the broken window, Zero Omega calmly slipped his Z-Saber back into its recharging sheath and lowered his second Buster arm. "You all right?"  
"Cut it a little close there, didn't ya?" Wycost complained, shoving the corpse away from him. He picked himself up and gave his head a good shake. "Christ on a cracker."

"Any kill you walk away from." Zero answered. "You didn't do too bad there, actually. I expected she'd punch your face in before I got my shots off."  
Wycost walked over and stared up at Zero. It wasn't hard to do, given that the six and a half foot tall Maverick Hunter dwarfed the stocky trooper by nearly seven inches. "Well, boo frickin' hoo hoo. You got some brass ones, lettin' yourself get thrown out of that window just to keep her from paying attention to you."

In the background, the Maverick lieutenant called Mazo slowly crept towards the door, hoping to get away. Without looking, Wycost pointed his Buster behind him and slammed a shot into the wall a foot away from the Maverick's face. Mazo let out a yelp and went stock still as Wycost turned his head about. "Did I say you could leave, you piece of garbage? You just sit the freak down whiles I finish my discussion here!"  
Zero smiled again. "You've got skills, bub. You've also got a lot of attitude."  
"Comes with the territory." Wycost shrugged. "In the Maverick SWAT, we ain't got all your fancy gadgets and superpowered weapons. We got what we got, and the rest we make up with in guts." He poked Zero in the chest. "Remember that the next time you feel like showing off."

"Fair enough." Zero replied honestly. "You ever consider joining up with the Hunters? I think with the right equipment, you'd make a Hell of an impact."  
"What, and leave all this behind?" Wycost joked. He lifted up his Buster again and fired a second warning shot, three feet to the right of his first one where Mazo had crept to. Again, the Maverick screamed like a woman. "Hey! You got a learning disorder or something?" He sighed and looked back to Zero. "Every frickin' day, somebody's trying to bust my balls. So, thanks, but no thanks. I like it fine here. Besides, I've got a few thousand credits in my pension that'd go to waste if I bailed now."

"All right. You ever change your mind, though, the offer's on the table." Zero extended his hand.  
Wycost considered it, then shook it. "Yeah, sure."  
"You think you can handle things from here, Sergeant?"

"Yeah, now that backup's on the way. It's all just cleanup now. I expect you've got other places to be tonight."  
"Story of my life." Zero chuckled. He turned around and jumped out of the hole in the window again, and allowed himself to fall towards the ground.  
Wycost shook his head. "Man, what a freakin' showoff." He whirled about and started towards Mazo, who screamed again on reflex. "All right, Maverick! You can get those ears checked all you like down at the precinct!"

* * *

Zero warped into Central Park and took stock of his surroundings again. All things considered, it wasn't a bad night so far. A good fight every now and then, in opposition to X's thinking, helped to keep him well balanced.

His commlink went off. Dr. Cain this time.  
"Yeah, Doc?"  
_ "Just thought I'd check in on my two star Maverick Hunters. How are things in New York?"_  
"All quiet here." Zero answered.  
_ "Oh, really?"_ Cain remarked curiously. _"Our intel operators tell me there was a Maverick skirmish at the U.S. Robotics skyscraper there."_  
"Like I said, all quiet." Zero chuckled. "Relax, Doc. This is what I get paid to do. You might want to make a note in the Maverick logs, though. We've got a new model Feraloid to watch out for. Plasma claws, laser blaster in the tail..."  
_ "That does sound nasty, all right."_ Cain admitted. _"I'll take care of it."_

Zero pondered things for a moment. "Oh, one last thing, Doc. Think you could mail off a set of the newest Dash Thruster modules to a Sergeant Wycost at the New York MSWAT Division?"  
_ "Well, sure, but why?"_

"Let's just call it payment...for services rendered." Zero smiled and cut off the link.

He started a lazy walk through the park, enjoying the evening.  
Yes, sir.

Not a bad "Reploid Independence Day" after all.


	5. 2010: A Leader Among Reploids

_**MEGA MAN X: THE REPLOID INDEPENDENCE DAY FILES**_

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

**2010: A Leader Among Reploids**

* * *

_Maverick Hunter Headquarters_

_New Tokyo, Japan_

_March 2__nd__, 2118 C.E._

He could hear Doctor Cain's words as clear as a bell.  
_ "You are the most advanced reploid I have ever made."_  
His gloved hand snapped down to his waist and wrapped around the teflon-gripped cylinder attached to it. The weak electromagnetic lock disengaged immediately.  
_ "You're stronger..."_  
The beam saber roared to life as he swung it up and away from him in a vicious arc. His right leg extended out in front of him, and he dropped slightly, focusing the cut of seething green plasma. The roiling superheated gas, kept locked behind the powerful electromagnetic barrier that formed the shape of the blade, couldn't fully prevent the bleed of energy. A hiss of ozone and heat washed back where the plasma met air.  
_ "...You're faster..."_  
His back leg swept out to the side, and he pivoted about on his front foot, carrying the slice off to his right. Immediately after the second strike, he pushed off of his back leg and frontflipped away, moving to occupy the space where his second imaginary foe had been standing. Midflip, he carried the saber in both hands and thrust out behind him, quickly, then retracted his arms back to regain his center of gravity, pivoted about, and landed, facing the center starting position.  
_ "...And your analytical intelligence is unmatched by any other."_  
A sharp grunt and one last rising slice off to his left...behind his original stance...finished the sequence.  
One and eight tenths of a second.  
Four illusory Mavericks dead.  
Sigma let his green beam saber linger on, pulsing in the air in front of him while he ran through his memory banks. The move had been nearly flawless; Only a slight hesitation in the midair backstab marred the otherwise perfect routine. His eyebrows narrowed marginally, and he made a notation in his personal log to make the necessary adjustments.  
_ "I believe that you may even come close to the potential that X has."_

Sigma deactivated his beam saber and stowed it back on his belt. The good doctor, the father of reploidkind, had told him that two weeks ago. It was meant as a congratulatory statement, issued on the same day as Sigma had learned he was being given command of the 1st Unit, and complete oversight of the entire Maverick Hunter corps.  
As things were, it rang in his mind more as a laughing evaluation of how far behind Cain thought he was, in comparison to Mega Man X.

X. Who had never raised the Buster he had been activated with in anger, in defense of himself or others. The same X who couldn't make a decision to save his life. Who was a part of the Maverick Hunter Headquarters, as much as Cain was, but who had no responsibilities.

Whatever Cain mistakenly believed, Sigma told himself, he would eventually see the truth about who was the best. The prototype...or the progeny.

His exercises completed, he stepped out of the padded recreational room and into the corridor. The hydraulic doors hissed shut behind him, and a passing reploid technician with casual blue and white striped armor stopped, glancing up at the imposing, seven foot tall reploid with awe.  
"Cuh...Commander Sigma, sir!" He went for a salute so hastily that he dropped his datapad. Embarrassed, the young reploid scrambled to pick it up, then popped up and finished the salutory gesture. "I was just about to inspect the third non-holographic rec room."

"You can save yourself the effort." Sigma answered, attempting to smile. His design was such that even that simple expression seemed to drip with tension and terror. "I just finished some exercises in there. The room is adequate. Please mark that rating in your logs."  
"Yes, sir. Right away." The technician quickly made the requisite changes to his screen. "Can I do anything else for you, Commander?"

** Commander.** Two weeks, he had held the title, and there were still moments that Sigma felt it didn't sit right. This wasn't one of those, though. Today, his rank wasn't given. It was deserved.  
Sigma thought for a moment, then found a suitable query. "What are our personnel numbers up to?"

"Let me check." The technician flipped to a different screen, bouncing through a series of beeps and flickering windows to arrive at the answer. "It helps that we just finished construction two days ago. People have been filing in very quickly since then. As of this morning, there were 37 members of the engineering staff, 6 janitors, 41 coordinators and situation response personnel, 14 doctors and nurses on the medical staff, and 23 Maverick Hunters, not counting the 52 candidates already registered in the system. Oh, and Doctor Cain and Mega Man X, of course."

"Of course." Sigma rumbled, staring at the wall. The response unnerved the technician, who quickly searched for a way out of the moment.  
"Um...It seems that there is a new batch of recruits that arrived twenty minutes ago, Commander."

Sigma brought himself back to the present and nodded. "Yes. A shipment of standard humanoid class droids from Sendra Enterprises. A goodwill gesture...not to mention, a sizable tax deduction." He made a quick, lazy salute back to the technician. "I'd best go see to them."  
"Yes, sir." The technician scattered down the hallway, and Sigma turned and walked in the other direction, his long strides taking him quickly through the multi-leveled central complex of the MHHQ.  
His MHHQ.

* * *

Sigma marched into the expansive meeting hall that Cain had insisted on building in the early phases of construction. It occupied one entire section and two floors of the central building's eastern side, and served no practical purpose. After all, any discussion that could be held within the meeting hall could be done elsewhere on the grounds. The dropdown movie screen, in particular, was just a waste of resources. The Maverick Hunters were the first line of defense against violence and chaos caused by the irregular, aberrant reploids called "Mavericks" in the popular media. They didn't have time to be watching movies, or going to the cafeteria and eating foods that their bodies didn't really require. Sure, there were a good two dozen human Maverick Hunter trainees on the base, but the reploids had no business being in there as often as they did.

Those thoughts of wasted resources and wasted time kept him occupied on the march from the back of the hall to the front. He remained unaware of the reploids sitting inside of the room, or how their idle chatter had fallen to a hush when his heavy bootsteps echoed inside. Their dumbstruck gazes, the palpable fear, escaped his notice. It was only when he climbed the six steps up to the stage and Boomer Kuwanger nodded his cutter-equipped head in a sharp, attention-grabbing bob, that Sigma realized he had once again lost himself in his mind.

It was becoming an unnerving habit, one that made him seem aloof to everything around him. Or perhaps caught under the weight of his office. One or the other.

Sigma stayed away from the podium and its microphone, stepping beside the reploid who had been under his command for the longest.  
"You're late, Sigma." The spindly Hunter remarked. "Dr. Cain suck you into another budget meeting?"  
"One of the benefits of being the Commander is that I don't always have to explain where I've been." Sigma countered. Boomer let one eye widen slightly, then harrumphed. Sigma slipped into another one of his smirking smiles. Boomer was a very relaxed individual, to the point of sloth, almost, and he knew when he could trade barbs with the herculean reploid Commander.  
"Well, I've kept them warmed up and worried for you. You might have noticed how a few looked ready to fragment their hard drives when you came in?"  
"Did they?" Sigma glanced over his shoulder and swept his piercing gaze over the assembly. His casual scan caught the sight of more than a few swallowing loudly. Boomer slapped his hand on Sigma's back and harrumphed.  
"Well, don't just stand there scaring the daylights out of the rookies. Go give them the speech."

"Just answer me this, Boomer." Sigma said, momentarily glancing away from the crowd. "Did you scan them?"  
Boomer's eyes rolled. "Can you recall a time I didn't? This is a pretty raw bunch. Standard issue reploids, minimal combat capabilities. You know...fodder."  
** Perfect.**

Sigma kept the remark to himself as he marched to the meeting hall's podium. The microphone clicked on when it sensed his presence, and after setting his large hands on the sides of the wooden altar, Sigma gave his sermon.

"You are here because you have chosen to spend your lives in the pursuit of a dream called peace. You are here because you know and acknowledge the very real threat that Mavericks pose, not only to humans, but to the world at large. You are here, perhaps, for other reasons. Money. Escape. Because you were sent here. As soon as you passed through those front doors, all those reasons ceased to be a going concern. Starting today, you are recruits. If you're determined, you will become Maverick Hunters. If you're lucky, you'll keep your head on your shoulders long enough to brag about it."

The sea of faces, all looking almost exactly the same, with the same color of armor and helmet and hands, the same body shape, soaked in his speech, thirsty for more.

"My name, for those of you who do not know me, is Commander Sigma. All Hunters, regardless of rank or position in their units, report to my authority. You're thinking to yourself, 'Why do the Hunters need me, when they have someone like him already?' The truth is, the Hunters need all the help we can get. I need your help. You have my solemn oath that myself and the other senior Hunters will train you, will teach you, will help you to become as good as you can. We will protect you, as you will one day protect the world. We are its sword. We are its shield. Remember that, and your aim will be true. Live by that, and you will earn my respect."

Sigma came to attention, set his hands behind his back, and calmly strolled off the stage and out of the auditorium as swiftly as he had entered it. The recruits watched him depart with the same reverent quiet, then turned back to the front of the room.

Boomer Kuwanger idly shifted from one foot to the other, examining them. He finally looked up to the new recruits, shrugged, and motioned for the door. "Dismissed."

* * *

"You ever bother to stop and think that maybe you should cut back on the Quiet Giant routine?" The question came from Hazil, the Chief Medical Officer of the MHHQ, and one of the few reploids who lacked legs. The good doctor rolled around on tank treads he'd had since his inception, but made up with his limited mobility with a larger than normal chest compartment. His abnormally gray hair and wrinkled face gave him a surly appearance...in many ways, a perfect counterpart.

Hands set behind his back, Sigma kept a slow pace to allow Hazil's treads to roll evenly. "It would be impossible to change who I am. It would be stupid to try. Besides, it serves a purpose. The recruits have to decide who they're more afraid of: The Mavericks, or me."

"Oh, I see." Hazil waved a hand in the air with a roll of his eyes. "You want them to be too scared to fail, eh?"  
"With your shield, or on it."  
"How very Spartan of you." The doctor quipped dryly. "Look, all I'm saying is that you're the Commander here. You've got nearly 100 reploids AND humans who've taken up the mantle, or want to, of being Maverick Hunters, and you'd do well to set a good example. Starting with being a touch more sociable."

"I will show them how to stay alive." Sigma answered coldly. "I will teach them how to fight, how to coordinate their attacks. How to be decisive, when to be cautious. Isn't that more important, Hazil? That they be alive, instead of comfortable?"

"Can't they have both?" The doctor asked innocently. Sigma looked at the ceiling and sighed. He was spared more of the irritating conversation by an announcement.  
_** "Commander Sigma, please report to Dr. Cain's office. Commander Sigma, please report to..."**_  
"Well, looks like the PA's working." Hazil said. "You'd best hurry on. And when you get there, tell that stodgy old fart that he's overdue for his physical. He's been making one excuse after another, and I'd like to get it done before the Ides of March hit."  
"I'll remind him." Sigma nodded in farewell, then marched down the corridors at a faster pace. Hazil turned a different corner and rolled towards the Medical Bay. He put on a smirking grin as his mind turned to more pleasant thoughts.  
"I've got a big, painful needle I've been saving for your immunizations, Cain..."

* * *

Dr. Cain's office was located just short of the reinforced doors that led to Maverick Hunter Headquarters' command center. As Cain's second, and most advanced "Personal" reploid, Sigma felt no need to hit the chime to announce his presence. His clearance alone got him through the doors, and into the extra-cold air and soft blue lighting.

Doctor James T. Cain, a spry and gangly old fellow in his mix-sixties, was old enough to recall a time when the world was still fearful of the infamous Dr. Wily, and grateful for the presence of the original Blue Bomber. As he usually did nowadays, he wore a loose fitting blue robe with red highlights.

For the moment, he was grumbling at his phone receiver, a throwback piece of "Retro" technology that had come back into vogue.. "No, I don't CARE about policy. You tell those backwater jerks that we've got the full support of the GDC, and if they want to argue about it, I'll be more than happy to come down there and whack them over the head a few times." Cain paused as his contact spoke, and his eyes flickered up briefly to Sigma. The massive reploid dipped his cleft chin down to the top of his green armor in greetings, and Cain smiled and winked back before focusing back to his phone.

"Ted?" Cain cut the man off. "Ted! Jesus, stop yammering excuses already. Just go out and get it done. Just remind them that maybe they won't feel as prickly about having a Regional base the next time some Mavericks bomb the crap out of their Parliament." Cain slammed down the phone receiver with authority, then let off a long, irritated sigh.

"Long day, Doctor?" Sigma asked, coming to parade rest.  
Cain rubbed at his forehead. "Nah, just the Chinese. They're resisting the establishment of two Regional Maverick Hunter bases in their country."  
"Well, couldn't you just petition the Russian government to add two more along the Sino-Russian border?" Sigma asked. "They would be adequately positioned there."  
"You'd think that idea would make sense." Cain said. "Unfortunately, their idea of foreign relations is armed guards on either side of the dividing line. Stationing regional Maverick Hunters there's out of the question if we don't want them spiraling into a shooting war. So, butt heads with the Chinese bureaucracy I must."  
Sigma shook his head. "You should just tell them we're doing it. That's what I would do."  
"It's what I'd like to do, Sigma, but for the time being, we still have to play by the rules." Cain got up from his chair and walked to stand in front of Sigma. "And until the countries they're located in start ponying up some serious matching budgets, our regional divisions are going to be underfunded and undermanned for a while. Which means that the MHHQ, paid for by my reploid technology rights and royalties, is the first and strongest line of defense. And you're in charge of it."

"Is that why you wanted me here, Doctor?" Sigma asked. "To state the obvious?"  
"No, actually. Just complaining, which I have a right to do." Cain slapped the giant reploid on the side of his waist and headed back to look out of his window. "Reduce tint." The windows complied, and sunlight filtered inside, cutting through the blue lights.

Cain looked outside into the courtyard of the Maverick Hunter Headquarters, smiling as he took in the sight of the different buildings and walkways. The entire plot was a massive complex situated in the countryside next to the highway that fed into New Tokyo. He set his wrinkled hands behind his back, relaxed as he saw reploid workers and hunters...his children...wandering about on their errands.

"Sixteen Hunter units isn't going to be enough." Cain announced, finally getting to his true intentions. "We have several with fewer than the standard number of personnel, because of their specialized operating conditions, and the ones able to support full squadrons are filling up with new recruits. I can expand the unit sizes, but that's a stopgap measure."  
"I see." Sigma blinked. "How many more Maverick Hunter units can we sustain?"  
Cain turned away from the window. "I made this base big for a reason...it's large enough to keep growing. We could fit enough personnel to run fourteen more hunter units and their support personnel, if need be...but we'll settle for creating just one new unit for the moment."  
"Just one?" Sigma asked bemusedly.  
"The 17th Unit." Cain clarified. "An Elite Unit, built out of the veterans from other units and those with advanced training. I'm going to be assigning you command of it."  
Sigma frowned, and came out of his stance. "Doctor, I already have command of the 1st Unit."  
"Yes, whose members in turn are commanders of their own specialized units." Cain added. "As much as I'd love to just send the 1st Unit out every time there was an incident, the risk of losing this bases' best and brightest isn't something I dance around lightly. Besides, they have Hunters of their own to worry about. You'll still have command of the 1st Unit, Sigma, but the First's responsibilities will be decreased. You'll be spending more time fronting the 17th from now on. The gaps made in the other units will be filled by our newcomers. Think of it as a training program...with the 17th and our specialized divisions as the finish line."

Sigma opened his mouth, and Cain cut him off with a pointed finger. "Sigma? Listen to your father. I know what I'm doing here. You're better than any reploid I know when it comes to combat, but I'm a good organizer."

"Very well, I'll head up the 17th, as you wish." Though he did his best to seem miffed, Sigma was secretly pleased at the news. A new unit to be in charge of, to supervise closely? Cain must have surely realized his potential at long last. "I will select the candidates for it, however."

"Fair enough." Cain waved his hand in the air. "With one exception, though. A friend of mine recently expressed interest in joining the Maverick Hunters. I want you to mentor him."

"Certainly." Sigma somehow managed to stand even taller than before. "Who's the candidate?"  
"Oh, you know him." Cain smiled thinly. "He's been with us since you were activated, actually."

Immediately, Sigma knew who the former archaeologist was talking about. His already invisible smile vanished completely.

* * *

_Maverick Hunter Headquarters _

_Hangar and Vehicle Bay_

Storm Eagle hovered down from his airship, The Death Rogumer, and landed softly on the concrete floor. A cluster of Maverick Hunters and technicians had caught his eye, as they seemed to be milling about one of the large cargo containers offloaded from a hovertransport.  
The leader of the 7th Unit folded his wings in loudly to gain their attention as he drew near, and glanced over their faces as they turned. Among the faces, he saw one Hunter who was well known to him. Unlike most others, the Hunter in question preferred a full helmet that kept his face hidden from view. There were some who wondered if he even had a face.  
"What's going on, Vile?" Storm asked.  
The violet-colored reploid who had earned the nickname "Boba" for some ancient cultural reference nodded once. "We just got in a shipment of new gear from the GDC Armorers. Looks like the old man's been emptying out his wallet again."  
Storm put his left hand to his waist, making sure to keep his turbofan equipped right arm pointed at the ground. "Oh? Some upgraded Bee Blader patrol ships?"

Mega Man X emerged from the other side of the cargo container, a genuine smile lighting up his face. "Even better, Storm Eagle. Hovercycles."

The hunters and mechanics stepped away from the open hatch, and the flight combat specialist got his first good look at them. Forward propulsion seemed to be caused by aft thrusters, and a pair of large hoverpropulsion units welded to the underside of the frame were responsible for the lift and stability controls. The armoring on it seemed woefully inadequate, but it likely needed a lighter body to stay aloft.

"They seem..." Storm searched for the right word, "...inadequate. We already have vehicular mechaniloids. Why would we need these?"  
"These are Landchasers. Brand new, not even into full production yet. Dr. Cain called in a few favors to get these." X announced. "Not every reploid has warp generators they can use to beam into the fray with. These will help to give the Hunters an extra edge. They've got light armor, enough to resist small arms fire around the vital spots, and there's a plasma cannon embedded in the nose."

Storm gave a meaningful glance back up to his airship, the pride of the MHHQ. "I think I'll stay to the skies, X. Perhaps Vile and the others can get some use out of these."  
"Mmmm...no." Vile laughed. "Why zoom around on a hoverbike, when I can make the ground shake from the footsteps of my Ride Armor?"

Sigma was a very large and imposing reploid, but the leader of the Hunters could also be eerily silent when he wanted to. That training allowed him to sneak up on the others, so his voice caught them all by surprise. "Because one of these days, Vile, you're going to discover that you're not invincible, and when that happens, not even your Chimera 'Mech is going to be enough to protect you."

"Oh! Commander Sigma!" The reploids of the MHHQ scrambled for a bit before they came to attention. Even Storm Eagle, one of Sigma's elite Hunters in the 1st Unit, smiled a bit and raised his weapon arm up in salute.  
Sigma offered a brief nod, but kept his attention focused on Vile. "Doctor Cain informed me of the new equipment yesterday. The GDC wants us to give these Landchasers a field test. They stay, Storm."  
"Yes, sir." The avian reploid crowed. "What are you doing down here in the hangar bay? You're not one to make an appearance in our section, usually."

Sigma's eyes flickered over to Mega Man X. "I wanted to speak with X for a moment."  
"Certainly." Storm looked to the rest of the reploids. "All right, Hunters. Go ahead and clear out of here. There's no sense watching the maintenance teams offloading the Landchasers."

Grumbling, the reploids peeled off from the collection, with Vile lingering so long that Storm Eagle had to grab the ace Hunter by his arm to drag him away.

His green eyes nervously shaking, X looked up at Sigma. In many ways, X was still stuck at the developmental level of a man in his late teens. "What did you want to talk about, Sigma?"

"Doctor Cain told me that you had talked to him recently."  
The bluntness of Sigma's dialogue jarred X back to his senses. "What? Oh, yes, I did..."  
"About being a Maverick Hunter." Sigma interrupted, leaning fractionally closer to the forerunner of the reploid race.  
X swallowed. "Yes."  
Sigma held the leaning stare for a moment longer, then pulled back. He noticed that X instantly started to breathe a little easier. One point against X's qualifications, he decided.

"Why do you want to be a Maverick Hunter, X?" Sigma asked.  
X spoke without hesitating. "To protect the world. Reploids came from my designs. In a way, I feel like I'm responsible."  
"So what you're telling me is...you feel obligated to do this." Sigma summarized slowly. "Not because you genuinely believe you would make a good Maverick Hunter."

X blinked. "I...I didn't know that there was a difference. When Doctor Cain made you Commander of the Hunters, did you feel like you would make a good Hunter?"

The unexpected turnabout left Sigma voiceless. When he spoke again, a renewed gruffness had taken hold.

"Doctor Cain has decided that you will be assigned to our newest Maverick Hunter unit...The 17th."  
"Really?" X exclaimed. Joy replaced his fear.  
"A unit I've been given command of." Sigma went on, destroying X's grin. "There's a lot to being a Maverick Hunter you don't know about yet, X. It takes more than exceptional ability and a sense of obligation to succeed...and survive. I intend to find out just how serious you are with this idea." Sigma blinked exactly once for effect. "Training starts tomorrow."

He turned and walked off, leaving the bewildered Mega Man X in his wake.

* * *

_Maverick Hunter Headquarters_

_Training Complex, 2__nd__ Pavilion_

_March 3__rd__, 2118 C.E._

_9:05 A.M._

The news of the 17th Unit's formation had spread like wildfire, and it had been shortly before the evening meal that a bulletin had been put up, listing the Hunters and most promising recruits who had been selected for it. Prominent among them were the shifty tactician and strategist Boomer Kuwanger, and the much more volatile and (over)exuberant Vile. Now the members of the newly formed 17th were congregated in another one of the MHHQ's secondary facilities. Just as the Hangar Bay stored their vehicles, the Training Complex held the bulk of their training and operations rooms.

Many were practicing hand to hand combat. The flash of both regular metallic blades and beam daggers glinted from the padded floor mats as the paired off Hunters maneuvered around each other, feinting and striking. Others were at the firing range along the southern wall, blasting holographic targets and metallic "Scrap dummies" with a maelstrom of magpistol rounds, laser blasts, plasma toroid bullets, and a host of even more obscure projectiles.

The central landmark of the 2nd Pavilion, however, was a large-scale holographic combat simulation room, used to run exercises of previous missions. Or so the idea behind its construction had been. Eventually, mission logs would allow the Hunters to redo old missions over and over again, to learn from past mistakes. For the time being, they made do with what they did have...A few spotty simulations taken from the Robot Wars near the end of the previous century. They weren't accurate, thanks to the severe loss of data caused by the Wars of 2090, but they were, in a fashion, suitable.

Especially for Vile, whose motto was "Always shoot first." He stormed through a hideously dangerous complex programmed to resemble the 3rd Skull Castle of Dr. Wily's making. At the moment, his run was taking him through a long corridor with a spike-lined floor, the only way across being several "Wanaan" class floor traps. The resulting combination meant that Vile had to keep constantly airborne, leaping from one Wanaan platform to another. Several times, the sharp metallic jaws of the traps had come up and snapped centimeters away from his heels. It would have taken only one misstep, one bite from them to stop his jump, jar him off balance, and send him tumbling to a quick death and the end of the simulation.

"Too slow!" He jeered, leaping away from another trap. The metal jaws closed harmlessly onto empty air, and he kept bounding on ahead. A loud buzzing noise caught his attention, and Vile turned his helmet to the left in time to catch a metallic bee with a payload of trouble flying in at him. "Oh, come on. Throw me a real challenge already, would you?" Vile pivoted his body about in midair and used his free hand to tilt his shoulder cannon up towards the inbound. The powerful cannon made a quarter seconds' worth of noise before discharging a large blast of plasma. The shot impacted the drone at the midpoint and blew it apart.

Vile landed on a platform without any Wanaan traps and swept the vulcan gunbarrels in his left hand's fingertips around. When nothing else approached, he harrumphed and stood back up. "End simulation."

The dark gunmetal corridor of Dr. Wily's legacy dissipated in a digitized stream of photons, leaving Vile standing alone at the center of the holographic simulator's empty room. He glanced at the wall behind him, towards a one way window that observers used to watch. "Well, how did I do, Boomer?"

The speaker inside of the simulator clicked on. _"No damage taken, Vile. A solid run there."_  
"HA!" Vile laughed, holding his arms out to the side as if asking for applause. "Was there ever any doubt?"  
_ "A bit."_ Boomer sounded about as thrilled as a cucumber sandwich. _"But you were hotdogging it there near the end, taking your time. That cost you. The computer calculated your final score at 91 percent. Rank A, but not SA."_

"Hey, you want me to run it again for you, chump?" Vile demanded. "I'll prove to you how good I am!"  
_ "Relax, Vile. You're good enough. Now come on out of there. Sigma just showed up, you should go out and greet him."_

Vile headed out of the holographic simulator and joined the cluster of Hunters who had gathered around Commander Sigma. The stoic, green-armored reploid glanced over them.  
"This facility seems to be adequate for our needs after all. I will have to thank Dr. Cain for his generosity later today." He paused and gave a nod of respect to Boomer Kuwanger, who appeared in a blur of sudden motion behind Vile. "Are we missing some people yet, Boomer?"

Boomer sized up the crowd and scratched at his chin. "Mmmm, I don't think so."  
Sigma remained emotionless as the doors to the 2nd Pavilion hissed open, and one more figure walked inside. The others turned and stared incredulously, but after a brief glance, Boomer tracked Sigma's reaction, finding it more interesting.

Sigma didn't need to see Mega Man X to know he'd finally arrived. "Now we aren't." Sigma muttered.

Tentative steps guided X through the sea of Hunters until he stood in front of Sigma. The Blue Bomber of 21XX proffered a slow, unsteady salute. "Reporting as ordered, Commander Sigma, sir."

"You're late." Sigma observed coldly. "Having second thoughts?"  
X looked away, embarrassed. "Not enough to quit."  
"Hey, Commander, what the Hell is this?" Vile stormed next to X and made a long sweep between X and Sigma. "What's the runt doing here? He wasn't on the 17th's Roster!"

Several others grumbled similar complaints, but fell silent when Sigma raised his hand. The Commander gave his head a shake. "X is here by the wishes of Dr. Cain. He will be training with me today. Whether or not he stays...that is to be determined."

Sigma turned about and headed for the holographic simulator. "Come on, X. It's time to see what you're made of."

* * *

Boomer Kuwanger took up his spot inside of the holographic simulator's control room and sat down at the scanner feeds. He was only marginally surprised when Vile squeezed into the closed quarters beside him.  
"You worried that he'll beat your score?" Boomer asked, drumming his fingertips on the keyboard.  
Vile scoffed. "Please. That little blue punk? I don't see what's so special about him. I just wanted to see if he'll run off crying when Sigma humiliates him."  
"Hmph." Boomer pulled the control room's microphone close. "Sigma, we're ready here."

* * *

_ "Sigma, we're ready here."_ The slightly distorted voice of Boomer Kuwanger announced. Sigma gave a cursory nod.  
"Go ahead and start up training program Sigma 8, Boomer."  
_ "...You sure about that, Commander?"_  
With X looking confused, Sigma gave the one way window along the side of the room a hard stare.  
_ "Right. Program Sigma 8, coming up for you."_

The dark room went blurry for a moment, then flashed to life. Pixel by pixel, the space around Mega Man X and Sigma changed, rising from the ground up, until they were standing in a totally alien environment.  
Mega Man X swiveled around on top of a large antigrav platform, 20 meters in diameter. He walked to the edge and stared down, realizing that the simulator had placed them at least three kilometers in the air, with a growing thunderstorm beneath them. Flashes of lightning burned through the gray, rainsoaked cumulus structures.

"Nice place." X said, stepping away from the edge. Preparing himself for the mission, he shifted his right hand away and brought out the assembly of his Mark 17 "X-Buster" arm cannon. "So what am I going to be fighting up here?"

On the opposite end of the platform, Sigma calmly pulled his beam saber from his waist and ignited the emerald blade. In the darkness of the thunderstorm beneath them, the green tint flickered in his eyes.  
"Me." Sigma answered, and charged.

"Wait, WHAT?" X exclaimed. That was all he could say before Sigma was on top of him, slashing down with a killing blow. X rolled clear of the strike and leapt back to his feet. "Sigma, wait!"

"Mavericks don't wait." Sigma replied. He turned around slowly, biding his time. "They strike the first chance they get, and they don't stop." He held back his blistering pace, choosing a slow walk towards X. The Blue Bomber seemed lost in a state of shock. Sigma was willing, temporarily, to take it easy. "Right now, pretend I'm a Maverick, walking over to kill you."

X raised his Buster and popped off a small bullet of plasma. "Just stay back!"

The shot crashed into Sigma's chest, but his armor absorbed the blow with only minimal discoloration. Sigma made a show of wiping his free hand over the scorched area. "Good aim. Your targeting sensors seem to be properly aligned." He kept walking, and X let out a strangled cry, firing off a volley of three more shots.

Sigma easily parried the blasts away. "Come on, X." Sigma taunted the novice. "Don't hold back. Don't try to take it easy. If you think like that, you'll end up dead."

Sigma quickened his steps and shifted into a run that X had trouble following. Sigma was on top of him in an instant, slashing in a horizontal cut. X backpedaled away from it, and earned a solid punch to the side of his head for his efforts. The blow knocked him to the far side of the platform, and he had to scramble to keep from being pushed off the edge.

X came back up to his feet and raised his Buster. Unlike before, it was shaking.  
His beam saber still lit and held down by his leg, Sigma started the slow walk towards X. "You think this is a game?" The Commander demanded. "Come on. Shoot me, X! If you want to live through this, SHOOT ME!"

X started to build a charge, then released it at half power. A burning line of irridescent green plasma coiled out at Sigma, too strong to be deflected.  
Sigma sidestepped it.  
"I told you to shoot me!" Sigma snapped.  
"But I...This is supposed to be training, Sigma! I'm not supposed to hurt you!"  
"Hurt me? You haven't even TOUCHED ME! Training is meant to prepare you for what you'll face out in the world!" Sigma waved his saber wildly, slicing the air with a hiss of ozone. "You worry too much, and that is only going to get you killed. You hesitate when you should use every trick you have in you! You overthink everything you do, and that too, is a dangerous flaw."

X charged up another level 2 "green sizzler" blast and fired it. Sigma sidestepped again, and was blindsided by a flurry of smaller shots before he could jerk clear and parry the storm away.

Sigma's eyes narrowed.  
** Not good enough.**

Another blur of motion took him beside X, and he made a quick, precise slash on the pass. X had only a moment to register the shock of his right arm being severed at the elbow before Sigma kicked him in the back and sent him sprawling to the middle of the platform.

X rolled onto his back at the end of his momentum-caused spin, eyes rolled into the back of his head as warning after warning racked his systems.  
Sigma reached down and picked up the severed mechanical arm, still sparking from residual power in the buster capacitors. He extinguished his saber and walked towards X. "Dr. Cain believes you have a potential that outstrips anything any reploid could ever fathom. He is only human...he made an error in judgment."

Groaning, X struggled to sit up. He only had a second to make the attempt before Sigma's crushing weight, centered in his boot, smashed down against X's chestplate. X let out a gasp as he was pinned to the ground.

Above him, Sigma's lantern jaw ground back and forth. "You'll never be a Hunter."

X's left arm shakily rose up, morphing into a Buster just as his right one had. Sigma blinked at the unexpected development. "Both arms?" He mused, with clinical detachment. "Interesting."  
The X-Buster pointed straight up towards his face, and Sigma's audio receptors picked up the faint whine as the rookie beneath him started to prepare a charge shot.  
A real one.

Sigma ground his heel into X's chest a little harder, hearing the crack of the colored metallic alloy as it started to give way. X's emerald eyes, shaded a touch blue in the ambient light of the thunderstorm beneath them, didn't waver from the target.  
A faint blue halo clung to the rim of the Buster's exit port.  
"Shoot me." Sigma ordered.

The whine increased, but X still held the charge back.  
Sigma ground his teeth and pulled his foot back. He grabbed X by the neck and raised the man in blue up to eye level, squeezing hard enough to choke off the flow of synthetic blood and nanobots to X's brain.  
"SHOOT ME!" Sigma roared. _"Pull the trigger! PULL IT!"_

X kept the same empty expression on his face, but said nothing. Did nothing.  
Bitterly, Sigma threw him back on the ground, causing X to bounce twice before coming to rest as a sodden heap. He dropped the severed arm beside the wounded, useless Hunter trainee.  
"Hesitation is death." Sigma concluded, pushing away the anger and sorting it into a dark corner of his heart. "As long as you hesitate to pull the trigger, you're of no use to the Maverick Hunters. You've been graded, Mega Man X. Rank B."

Sigma turned about and faced the void of thundering oblivion. "Terminate program." He took a moment to blink, and immediately regretted it.  
In the millisecond it took him to blink, X was suddenly kneeling in front of him on the antigrav platform, left arm raised, Buster pointed. A red glow coming from inside of his helmet.  
A lightning bolt exploded upwards into the stratosphere behind him, and X fired.  
There was no time for Sigma to react. A wash of angry, blue-white plasma roared by the side of his head, causing heat so intense that his synthskin burned and warnings filled his vision.

Sigma stumbled backwards, a hand pressed to his grazed cheek. He stared wide-eyed at X. The man in blue panted as the simulation collapsed around them, leaving the two standing in the empty room once more.

X slowly got back up to his feet, but didn't lower his Buster. "There's a difference between being unable to fire...And choosing not to." He announced. The red glow from behind his control chip's crystalline covering faded away, and just as quickly as the true Hunter within X had appeared, it vanished.

Sigma blinked several times before reaching down behind him to pick up X's discarded arm. He tossed it across the small space between them, and X disengaged his Buster smoothly, catching it in his returned hand.  
"Get yourself fixed up in the Medical Bay." Sigma ordered.  
Jaw clenched, X raised the removed appendage up, Buster still active, and gave a salute. No further words passed between them as Mega Man X left the room.

"Is this the potential you have, X?" Sigma asked, when he was alone.  
The speaker crackled as Boomer cut in. _"Sigma? Jesus, I thought...He could have killed you with that shot."_  
"But he didn't. Record his rank for the unit records. Put him on probationary status." Sigma concluded.  
_ "He's just a punk."_ Vile declared. _"I'm twice the Hunter he'll EVER be!"_

Sigma left the holographic simulator without further comment, too lost in his thoughts to bother with a comeback. The 17th would have some very good people in it, and it had just gained a wild card.  
He heard the whispers from the members of the 17th in Pavilion 2 as he stormed for the exit, most of it dealing with the seared skin on his face. Let them whisper. A little competition would be good for their performance. Tomorrow, the burn would be repaired, the blemish erased.  
The scar would remain. What worried Sigma the most, a fear he dared not give voice to lest it gain power over him, marred his perception for the rest of his life.  
The choices X made, when he finally did make one...  
Would steer the future of reploidkind.


	6. 2011: Prescription For Living

_**MEGA MAN X: THE REPLOID INDEPENDENCE DAY FILES**_

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

**2011: Prescription for Living**

* * *

_**Video Message Entry G4286-LO475**_

_**Timestamp: 02-06-2124**_

_This message is for Doctor Frank Lassky. Do yourselves a favor if you've hacked this communication and kill the feed. Wipe it off your hard drive too, unless you're the sort who __**likes**__ to keep around files on your hard drive talking about genital warts. Pervert._

_ (Pause)_

_ Okay, Frank. Thought you might get a kick out of that. It's your old friend Hazil at the MHHQ. Figured it was about time for me to start my next letter to you, since we've hit a lull around here. And you know how things are with the Maverick Hunters. Lulls are just the space between disasters. I'm assuming everything's going swimmingly at your current post? _

_ Honestly, Frank, I don't see much point in this whole International Medical Exchange program. I mean, come on. Who's going to want to come work here? The Hunters make better money than I do, for crying out loud. Of course, they die off faster. The only good thing from this mess is the IME sends me a case of Tequila every year. The good kind. _

_ So…Yeah. Your last letter. You wanted to know more about what I do here? I'll tell you what I can without compromising any security regulations. Just know that there's probably going to be a space between where I start this message and when I send it…._

_**(Klaxon)**_

_ There, see what I mean? _

**Pause Recording**

* * *

_Maverick Hunter Headquarters_

_New Tokyo, Japan_

_June 2__nd__, 2124 C.E._

_1:43 P.M._

The Medical Bay was a sprawling facility that took up the floorspace of seven regular sized rooms. It was deceptively expansive in that regard; When empty, it seemed enormous. When it was filled with wounded and dying patients and the medical staff of the MHHQ, one had to watch where they put their elbows.

It wasn't as bad as it had been in years past, thanks to the human and reploid healers who had become vastly more proficient over time. The wounded were spread out, and the space was utilized with enough space between tables for the staff to have some breathing room.

Into this organized rush of fluids, wires, and diagnostic hookups came a grizzled, gray-haired human-build reploid that moved not by legs, but a tank tread assembly that seemed borrowed from some past lunar rover. His shoulder ball joints were branded with green square crosses; the markings of his vocation. He glanced around once, getting the lay of the land, then cleared the doorway to his private office so the door could shut.

"All right, what do we have today?" He asked loudly.

The head nurse, a no-nonsense human woman with a grandmotherly air, approached him. "The 11th Unit, Hazil."

"The Eleventh?" Hazil frowned and opened up a panel on the front of his oversized chest compartment. He pulled out a datapad and glanced over it. "I thought they were doing a training exercise today, Achiko."

"They were." The woman folded her arms. "Landchaser combat maneuvers. There was an accident."

"Christ on a cracker." Hazil stowed his datapad noisily and rolled to the nearest table. A groaning male reploid in gray armor tilted his helmeted head to the side and looked up at him. One of his legs was mangled to the point of being scrap. "Let me guess. Somebody was popping wheelies with the nose blade and the rest of you thought it was a good idea?"

"Well, I…" The stammering rookie started up. He shut his mouth when Hazil flicked a finger against his forehead.

"Aah, shut up." Hazil looked to the nurse running the IV machine. "Give him 20 cc's of Nanostasis Kelverite." The nurse nodded and pressed a button on the side of the machine, and the energy-enriched nanobots running from the device's tube to the I/O port on the side of the Hunter's neck went from dim blue to pale green.

The injured trooper's eyes rolled up into his head, and he slumped into medically induced stasis. Hazil sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "That shut him up. Okay, Achiko, how many do we have in here today?"

"Twelve, sir. Fully half of the unit. Most of them are the new recruits, but...Commander Halcyon was struck in the collision as well."

Hazil looked around the room again and finally identified a very messy reploid with mangled armor, being tended to by three other nurses. What was left of his helmet carried the distinctive wings that Commander Halcyon of the 11th Unit wore. "Okay, then. That's my table. Last thing, Achiko. Old man Cain have anything to say about this?"

"Oh, something about getting some Landchaser simulator programs so they don't scrap 2 million credits worth of hardware the next time."

Hazil smirked and rolled over to Halcyon's operating bed. _Somebody has to worry about the money, and it might as well be Cain. After all, it's __**his**__ money._

Halcyon was a goliath among the sea of smaller humanoid reploids who came in and washed out at blistering speeds within the Maverick Hunters. At two and two-thirds of a meter tall, the silver and chrome plated Halcyon dwarfed most other Hunters. He was raw strength and fury in combat, and had designed the 11th to act as a frontline Cavalry and shock unit. Hazil recalled that often the 11th was paired with another team; Halcyon's boys made the noise and kept the Mavericks facing forward, and the other team came from behind and smashed them against the anvil.

The nurses stepped aside as Hazil rolled up and leaned his torso over Halcyon's body. The towering Commander grunted, teeth smashed together in pain, and looked up at him.

"Hey, there's my doc."

"Hey yourself, Halcyon." Hazil took the diagnostic reader from one of the nurses and glanced over it. "Damn, son. You got pretty beat up here. What happened?"

"Two of my guys decided to go hotdogging. They turned it into a race. I tried to get up there in between them to put an end to it, but they hardly noticed me until all three of us ended up in a wreck. The rest of my unit was following so close to see what was going to happen, the pileup got worse."

"Oh, it got worse, all right." Hazil referred to the list of critical failures. "Looks like your ablative armor plating's slagged…_again_…your secondary circulatory motivators are out in your arms and legs, and I'll need to rewire the entire left side of your body. I'm getting error messages in patterns I didn't know could happen."

"Well, you know what I always say, Hazil." Halcyon coughed weakly, spitting up a glob of purple blood against the doctor's chest. "You gonna do something, do it big."

Hazil gave him a consoling smile. "I take it those two hotrods are going to be fired?"

"If they aren't already."

"Can you put yourself out, or do I need to give you some sleepy juice?"

"Nah, my stasis protocols are still working. Wake me up when you're done, all right?"

"Give me a day or two."

"Take three." Halcyon blinked twice, and slumped lifelessly against the sterilized bed.

Hazil cracked his knuckles and nodded. "All right, then. Let's get started, people. It's gonna be a long day."

* * *

**Resume Recording**

_Sorry about that, Frank. As they say, duty calls. The Maverick Hunters get to train with a whole lot of different pieces of equipment. Some of them are pretty basic; hovertransports, cargo loaders. Then you get into the 'Mechs and…well, things get screwy. Today's little screwup was with Landchasers. You know, those hovercycles they make? The newest series comes with a plasma blade in the front that activates when you pop a wheelie. Some genius thought it was a good idea. It nearly got twelve Hunters scrapped this time around._

_ So, where was I…_

_ Oh, yeah. The Maverick Hunter Headquarters. I've been here for more than six years now, since it was first being built. I didn't start out here, though. That's the thing with the Maverick Hunters. Nobody started out here. We all come here. For my part, I served as a field medic in the RAF. Came over with Storm Eagle after we lost his mentor, Bolt Eagle, to IRA Insurgents. Heh…crazy to think that in this day and age, with all these Maverick incidents and two Uprisings, humanity still finds ways and reasons to kill each other. _

_ I supervise a staff of about thirty medical personnel here, and believe me, I need every last one of them. We got lucky today, with lucky meaning nobody got hauled off in a funeral crate. Most of my time is spent dealing with fixing up reploids, actually. We used to have more humans who volunteered for the Hunters, but anymore, we only have one Hunter Unit who has humans. And they're nuts, if you ask me. Cain doesn't begrudge them their vows, and they mostly keep to themselves. Fact is, when you're going up against Mavericks, especially the __**real terrors**__, being a reploid yourself helps. Reploids are stronger, faster, and can take more abuse._

_ Today's accident reaffirmed something, though. They definitely aren't smarter. Wisdom comes with age, same with us as it is for you, Frank. _

_ It's my job to keep these Maverick Hunters alive and functioning. Most of the time, I do just that. Sometimes, though, we aren't so lucky. The grim reaper takes his share around here._

_ That's why I took up drinking. Until next time, Dr. Lassky._

_**End Recording**_

* * *

_Maverick Hunter Headquarters_

_The Last Round__ Bar and Pub_

_June 2__nd__, 2124 C.E._

_9:54 P.M._

The MHHQ still held the claim as the only military or paramilitary installation which had its own full-service bar and microbrewery. Both were carefully overseen by a reploid who had been built to resemble a jowly-faced bulldog. He usually wore a stained apron, he was as surly as his house lager was dark, and most people couldn't remember the last time he took a break.

Everybody on base called him Pugs.

Though he had the physical specs of an outright bruiser, Pugs preferred to keep his growly voice to a lower timbre and speak primarily with his presence. It was most likely because of this that _The Last Round_ had so few fights. Hunters behaved themselves. Those that didn't got thrown out none too gently. The support staff, by and large, were more behaved. A few, Pugs took very good care of.

Hazil, and Doctor James T. Cain, were two of them.

One of the waitstaff under Pugs' command brought a tray with two ceramic shot glasses and two frosty handled mugs of beer to the table in the northwest corner of the room. Hazil and Doctor Cain looked up and nodded almost simultaneously as the waiter set their drinks down. "Two sake bombs, on the house gentlemen. Courtesy of Pugs."

"Huh. He's doing it to us again." Cain said lowly. Hazil and Cain dropped the sake cups into their beers with a splash, then raised the mugs in salute as they looked over to the bar. Behind the till, Pugs met their act of appreciation with a knowing nod before he continued his business with another patron.

Hazil nursed his, but Cain began draining it with a zeal to match a man twenty years his younger. The old medical reploid winced. "You know, Doc, as your physician I'm required to inform you that chugging can pose a significant risk."

"And I'm obliged to remind you that there was a man who lived on Twinkies and Cutty Sark whiskey, and did it until he was in his nineties." Cain retorted, wiping some froth from his mouth. "Besides, you drink more than I do."

"And you get more headaches." Hazil popped his chest compartment open and pulled out a small bottle of pills. He slid it across the worn table to Cain. "Speaking of, this is for the hangover you're bound for tomorrow."

"You giving me _carte blanche_ to get shitfaced now, Hazil?"

"More like it's acknowledging I couldn't stop you if I wanted to." Hazil clarified with a roll of his eyes. "Still, being as it's been another Hellish day, I'll grumble less than usual." He raised his tankard up and drained the rest of his beer and sake in a series of powerful swallows, then slammed it down on the table and raised a hand up with two fingers extended.

Cain whistled at Hazil's sudden vigor. "Yeah, I heard. The 11th had a mishap during their training exercises. Looks like I've got some slots to fill."

"You know, we really ought to be more selective about the dinguses we let into the Hunters, Doc." Hazil said, and not for the first time.

"Perfect. As soon as they stop dying on us so quickly, I'll be sure to tell our recruiters to slow up the pace and focus on quality." Cain retorted. The argument was one he and Hazil had been keeping alive for what seemed like years now. "In the meantime, better that our Hunter units operate at full strength as much as possible. Even if some of them don't make it back."

"Evolution at work?" Hazil raised an eyebrow, feigning surprise. "I'm amazed you would bring it up."

"Was I talking about evolution anywhere in there?" Cain scoffed. "Stop twisting my words, you old billy goat. I'm not getting into that debate, now or ever. I'm just being pragmatic. We're shortstaffed as it is, and we're better off here than the Regional Hunters are. I really wish that all these Maverick incidents didn't put so much of a strain on everything, but they do."

"You make all this damn money from your patents on reploid technology, and it all goes into this money pit."

"Hey, I _like_ this money pit." Cain retorted. "It's not just a privately funded paramilitary group with loose ties to the GDC, Hazil. For a lot of Hunters…this place is home."

"Home?" Hazil grunted. "You've been drinking too much."

"I've been drinking too little."

"In either case, you haven't drank the right amount." Hazil glanced up as the waiter brought over a fresh pair of beers. "Let's see if we can't solve that problem."

The two raised their glasses up and clinked them together. "Things are gonna get busy in short order, Cain, so take it easy while you can." Hazil advised his primary patient.

"Yeah." The old man who ran the MHHQ nodded slowly. "Just two days now."

"What's the chatter been like from our intel guys? They expect something big?"

"You know as well as I do that the chatter we pick up on doesn't always tell us what's going to happen." Cain took a long swallow. "We make preparations…and we wait and hope."

* * *

_**Video Message Entry J5197-MF480**_

_**Timestamp 03-06-2124**_

_Hey there, Frank. Sorry I didn't write back sooner. In my defense, though, do you do any work at all over there in Dallas? I send out my message and four hours later I have your reply? Tell me you don't work by an hourly rate. Anyhow._

_ To answer your question, yes, things get tense around here. Especially this time of year. June 4__th__ is tomorrow, and that particular day doesn't mean a damn thing to you. It means everything to Mavericks._

_ June 4__th__, 2118, old Sigma went Maverick and took all the members of his 1__st__ Unit with him. They tore up the MHHQ, and we lost a lot of good people. I was lucky enough to live through it. Even though X and Zero put him down, he still popped back up again somehow. Long story short, Sigma's become a messianic figure for Mavericks the world over. And they treat June 4__th__ like their own twisted, murderous version of Christmas. We get a lot of localized incidents that happen on June 4__th__, and I get a lot of business here in the Medical Bay. The worst years are the ones where there's some kind of coordination between Maverick attacks. Then you get folks who go around screaming that it's the end of the world. _

_ We do what we can to get ready for it. The GDC tries to get us as much intel as they can, and the Maverick Hunters fields their own communications and information interception officers…spooks, really. At the end of the day though, the warriors all keep vigil, sharpening their swords for battles they can't really, truly prepare for…_

_ And my staff and I make sure we've got plenty of replacement parts and stabilization fluid for the injuries that always seem to happen. The Hunters fight to stop the Mavericks._

_ Me, I fight to keep the Hunters alive._

* * *

_Command Planning Center_

_Maverick Hunter Headquarters, New Tokyo, Japan_

_June 3__rd__, 2124 C.E._

_10:14 A.M._

"Okay, then." Cain made the appropriate notation to his datapad. "That takes care of old business. Let's go ahead and dig into what's on all our minds."

"Your retirement?" Sub-Commander Fortran called out jokingly. Scattered and uneasy laughter carried through the room after the remark from the 11th Unit's temporary leader.

Cain rolled his eyes. "Same thing I told those mooks on the GDC Security Council, Fortran. I'll quit when I'm dead." He tapped his walking stick on the podium to settle the room back down again. "Tonight is the eve of Reploid Independence Day. We've been on alert status Bravo since May 31st, and at noon today we're ramping it up to alert status Alpha. I'd take it to Omega if I could, but cooler heads feel an Omega alert status is ill-advised, since we've only used it during times of identified Maverick Uprisings…When Sigma's kicking it around."

"You expecting him to show up?" Everybody in the room gave a respectful glance towards Commander Zero Omega of the Special Unit 0. The blond-haired elite's green eyes seemed to spark with the promise of battles not yet fought.

Cain sighed. "Your guess is as good as mine, Zero. But when it comes to Sigma, he's like the Spanish Inquisition, and…"

**"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition."** A host of the Commanders finished the sentence for Cain, Commanders X and Zero the loudest among them.

Sitting in the back, Chief Medical Officer Hazil rolled his eyes and dug in his boxlike chest compartment. He pulled out a small flask and took a drink. Commander "Bulldog" Hayes who was sitting beside him took a sniff of the air and wrinkled his nose.

"Vodka? Before noon, Hazil?"

"Can't do my drinking during the fireworks, Bulldog." Hazil answered the only human Commander in his soft voice. "Gotta chug ahead of time."

"Sober up before you operate, then."

"I always do." Hazil looked up ahead to Cain, but held the flask to the side and shook it temptingly. After a pause, Bulldog took the small silver canteen and downed a quick swig.

"Anyhow. Intelligence hasn't turned up square one of dirt on our bald-headed antagonist, so we're tentatively hoping he's out of the picture for a while longer. That doesn't mean there isn't a whole host of Mavericks willing to celebrate in the ugliest fashion in his absence. That said, I've come up with the assignments. Listen up, boys, you know how I feel about repeating myself."

Though Hazil wasn't a Unit Commander like all the others in the room, his duties nearly required that he be kept in the loop. He listened with one ear as Dr. Cain rattled off where in the world the Maverick Hunters would be stationed. Zero would be taking his unit to New York City again…no surprise there, really. The 17th in Mexico City, because of some intel that a gathering might be in progress. Bulldog Unit in New Tokyo with the rest of the 11th Unit as support, the 9th in Moscow, the 15th in…

_Probability of casualties: Too many._

Hazil closed his eyes and tuned out the rest of the roster. With luck, this year's mayhem would be relatively low key. Not like the party that a group of Mavericks amped up on Nechwild Serum had held in Lisbon three years ago. More than 16 people were murdered in their bacchanalian bonfire bash, ritualistically butchered prior to immolation.

He hadn't slept right for a week after patching up the Hunters' injuries from that standoff. A lot of that had to do with the fact one Hunter shoved a magpistol under his chin afterwards.

"…And that'll about cover it. Okay, boys. The floor's open for questions."

A flurry of hands went up, and Cain matched the eager reploids with a hard glare. "_Only questions dealing with your Reploid Independence Day assignments._ Assholes."

A second batch of sporadic laughter scurried across the walls, and several hands went down. Mega Man X's gloved hand remained up in the air, and Cain gestured to the Blue Bomber. "Yes, X?"

"What are the rules of engagement, Doctor Cain? What if we have to deal with some interspecies rioting?"

"The GDC would prefer that we leave the humans to the human cops, but experience has shown you lot it doesn't always come out that cleanly." Cain rubbed at the bridge of his nose, a sign he was dealing with the lingering effects of a headache. Hazil shook his head. _Didn't take all your medicine, did you old man?_

"For now, let's stick to the basics. Don't fire unless fired upon. If you _do_ have to engage some violent humans, make sure that you by God document the mess, and _identify yourselves clearly_. Do it by the numbers, and if you have to tussle with a militant faction that's crawled out of the woodwork with some illegal firearms, I can at least cover your asses and keep you from being mindwiped." Cain pulled his crutch back down and pressed it against the floor. "But protect yourselves first and foremost. If you feel like you're in danger, act on it. Hazil's going to have enough problems on his hands dealing with the messes the rookies cause. Keep eyes on your teams, and we might just come out of this a little less banged up than usual." Cain blinked. "Any other questions?"

When none came, the old man in his usual red-fringed blue kimono exhaled. "Dismissed, then. Good luck out there, Hunters."

* * *

_MHHQ Medical Bay_

_6:30 P.M._

_"Warning! Warning! Inbound casualties! All second and third shift medical crews, prepare for Triage and treatment!"_

Hazil emerged from his office with a hard line set to his jaw and a grim shadow behind his eyes. The Chief Medical Officer rolled on his treads to the center of the room and glanced around. The second shift had just started two hours ago, and they were relatively alert. After the announcement from MHHQ Command, the third shift crews would be rousing themselves from their stasis capsules and bunks to run in here. Two shifts being called to duty at the same time could mean only one thing, and it made Hazil's heart sink.

One of their deployed units just got themselves into hot water.

The first beams of warplight came crashing down into the room and reformed into battle-damaged Hunters. Hazil's eyes widened as he saw the unit crest they carried. The 17th Unit.

"Christ." He regained his bearings and brought his staff in with a focusing whistle. "All right, set up for Triage in the east side! Nurses, get that equipment set up. Physicians, prep for surgery. Achiko, you and me are on Triage!"

As the third shifters started to roll in through the hissing sliding doors of the Medical Bay, Hazil got the first group of inbound wounded situated. Achiko activated the wireless status uplink to their datapads, and Hazil got down to brass tacks with a reploid who was limping along only by the aid of one of his teammates. Even without looking at his tablet, Hazil knew the reploid was in trouble.

His right arm and the entire side of his torso was either vaporized or slagged. Plasma damage, missed hitting the microfusion generator by a decimeter.

"He's first." Hazil looked to the Hunter playing packmule. Shrapnel damage, several puncture points through his armor. Scuffed by debris, but the worst of it would be inside. He seemed to be lucid and in the moment, though. A good sign. "You're a little better off. What the Hell happened?"

"It was an ambush." The shrapnel damaged Hunter grunted, forcing his way through the pain as a pair of orderlies took the more injured Hunter away from him. "Mexico City…it's a rally point. My recon team scouted an insurgent group of Mavericks headed into the old slums, and followed after them. A mess of IEDs cut off our line of retreat, and they jumped us hard."

"How'd you get out of there?"

"Commander X warped in and tore into them so we could retreat." The Maverick Hunter explained. "He's still there with the rest of the Unit lighting it up, I think."

"Which means things are gonna get even hairier." Hazil said. He patted the Hunter on the shoulder. "Your internal repairs working?"

"Slowly."

"We'll speed it up for you some. Gireau! This one's yours!"

Hazil meandered over to another group, and sized them up even faster. "Priority. Third tier. Give this one to Klaus."

He stilled his treads when he reached a slumped Hunter lying on the floor with a glazed look in his eyes. The gray-haired medical reploid's face twisted up, and he leaned his upper torso over to shut the reploid's eyelids.

"Don't bother with him." Hazil whispered. Achiko took one look at the bullet hole through the crystal covering of the reploid's helmet and winced. The Hunter was dead and lost for good after an injury like that.

"Hey, "Him" has a name!" One of the previously coded patients snapped angrily.

"I don't wanna know his name, son." Hazil answered the hotheaded Hunter's rage with a quiet stare. Not waiting for an answer, the medical reploid turned around and rolled to his next diagnosis.

* * *

_**Video Message Entry KF264-MS389**_

_**Timestamp 03-06-2124**_

_ One of the hardest things to get used to in this job is the time zones, Frank. It's the third here in New Tokyo…at least for another twenty-four minutes. Over in Mexico City, it's morning. Midmorning, and the Hell's just getting warming up._

_ Somebody decided to start the party early there. Here, a party's the last thing on our mind. We had eight casualties to start with. Most of them were injuries of varying degrees. We treated them and set them back on the road to recovery. One Hunter came in, though…he was gone._

_ There's plenty of ways to kill a reploid, Frank. Some of them are easier than others, but with enough time, patience, and money, you can revive a reploid. Mostly. It's rare that a reploid reactivated after a total systems shutdown resembles who they were before, even if you do take the right steps. Sometimes they don't laugh like they used to, old tics are gone, or new ones develop. Revived reploids sometimes go nuts for no reason. I've got a better success rate than most at reactivations, but even I can't work miracles. You need a reploid's control chip to restore them. It's their brain. The center part of their soul, really._

_ You take that out…a reploid is just an empty metal shell. That's one of Sigma's favorite tricks. He loses his generals, he makes shell copies as a last line of defense. The kid who came in tonight, he was shot in the head. It was a lucky shot. Not even a maground, just a high impact bullet that came in at the right angle. Blasted through the control chip cover of his helmet and scrambled his brain like a blender._

_ A lucky shot, and one kid gets tossed onto the pile of corpses we shovel through this building. This business._

_ This Goddamn war._

_ They're still fighting in Mexico City, and from what I hear, it's heating up. They're crawling out of the woodwork there, "El Presidente" has declared martial law. Regional Hunters are being sent in as reinforcements._

_ Tomorrow's going to be worse._

**End Recording**

* * *

_Dr. Cain's Office, MHHQ_

_June 4__th__, 2124 C.E._

_7:30 A.M._

_"Damn it, Cain, let us redeploy!"_ Zero was usually one to keep quiet and let his rage flow through his ferocious attacks, but every so often his dialogue became more animated. _"The 17__th__ Unit is getting hammered in Mexico City, and you know it!"_

"I also know that we can't spare you, Zero." Cain refused the request. "New York's going to be heating up anytime now. You, and those thrill junkies in your unit are to _stay put._ Understood, Commander?"

Zero had long ago mastered the wrathful stare. Glowering, he nodded his head ever so slightly and killed his communicator.

Cain leaned back into the reclining chair in his blue-lit office and sighed. "Were it any other day of the year, I'd tell him to parachute in hard and fast. I hate June fourth."

"You and a lot of other people." Hazil rolled into the MHHQ Commander's office. "How's the medicine working?"

"Fine." Cain said, probably lying. "What can I do for you, Hazil?"

"I wanted to tell you I refused your request to put Commander Halcyon back on active duty."

"Hazil, we need him!"

"And I'm sure that X feels he needs reinforcements, but we're all feeling disappointed." Hazil held his ground. "I'm not signing off on Halcyon's clean bill of health and doing a fast startup. I told him it'd be two days, and I don't pad my estimates, Cain."

"No." The old man stood up and meandered to the fishbowl that had been made from the shell of Armored Armadillo. He sprinkled a few flakes of food in the water for his pet goldfish, Sigma II. "No, you've always been very scheduled. All right, Hazil. I don't like it, but I'll deal with it. Halcyon's your patient."

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm sure he hates missing out on the fireworks."

"It doesn't." Cain answered wearily. "Thanks for the update, Hazil. You'd better get on back to your post." The old man looked to his physician. "Commander Hayes called in before Zero did. He's bringing in some casualties."

* * *

_Medical Bay_

As he rolled into his section of the MHHQ, Hazil noted that it was fast approaching capacity. Most of the patients were Hunters brought back from the ongoing melee in Mexico City. Over to one side, though, he saw several members of the 13th Squadron; Commander Hayes' outfit. Chiefly among them was Chloe Yasune, a young human woman who had been with the Hunters since July of 2118. Her face was an unreadable mask, but she was holding a gauze pad on the inside of her right forearm.

"I see you're getting another Green Emblem for this." Hazil joked, easing to her bedside. "How many do you have so far, Chloe?"

"I lost count." Chloe answered grimly. With humans as the minority in the Hunter organization, her clipped response emphasized how fortunes continued to smile on her. "Took some shrapnel out there. We crossed up with some renegades outside of Kotobuki…They were blowing up vehicles for the Hell of it."

"Vehicular destruction." Hazil reached for his medical scanner. "That's a new one for Mavericks. Well, let's have a look at you then."

Chloe waved him off. "No, take care of the 11th first. Their boys took the worst of it protecting us."

"Well…all right. If you say so." Hazil eyeballed her scrapes, bruises, and punctures. "You don't seem to be in danger of dying on me, at least. Where's Hayes?"

"He went out with the last HQ transport."

"Captain's the last one off the ship, then?"

"Not exactly. He's with one of the wounded."

The doors of the Medical Bay hissed apart to make room for a gurney, and pushing the rolling bed and its occupant came the haggard looking Commander of the 13th.

The second thing Hazil noticed was that the new patient was a very pregnant Japanese woman.

Hayes spotted Hazil and turned the gurney in his direction. "Doc, I've got a patient about ready to pop here!"

Hazil couldn't help but make a face. "Since when did we start letting pregnant women in the Hunters?"

"She's a civilian that got caught up in the mess out there. We pulled her out before the Mavericks roasted her car, but she's gone into labor."

The cries of birthing pains from the woman brought the bustle of the Medical Bay down to a low murmur. Hazil could feel the eyes of the staff on him.

He nervously scratched the back of his head. "She should have been sent to New Tokyo General. They're better equipped for this kind of thing, Hayes!"

"The civilian ambulances were gone by then. It was either _our_ transport, or keep her there to deliver on the highway. And Hazil, she's flat out of time!"

"I'm an emergency trauma physician, not an obstetrician!" Hazil protested. "Hell, what do I know about…"

"Birthin' babies?" Bulldog Hayes finished Hazil's sentence. "My guess is a lot more than you like people to know." The veteran human Hunter marched up beside the curmudgeonly doctor and gave him the staredown. "She's here, she's in labor, and you're the best we've got. Now deliver this baby."

Hazil was frozen to the spot and silent. Only when the mother to be let out another keening wail did Hazil shake free.

"What the Hell." He ran a hand through his gray hair, then whistled to his staff. "All right! Everybody not working on a patient, with me!"

A few members of the MHHQ medical corps rushed over to his station, and Hazil quickly issued their orders. "Let's do this by the numbers. I need a monitor on her vitals, a midwife to walk her through her breathing, warm water, clean towels, and a bucket and a mop." Hazil pushed Hayes away from the table and peered down to check the woman's dilation.

"Why the bucket and mop?" One of the younger reploid orderlies asked quizzically.

Hazil harrumphed in reply. "Because this is gonna get messy."

* * *

_Maverick Hunter Headquarters _

_New Tokyo, Japan_

_June 5__th__, 2124 C.E._

_8:24 A.M._

Everybody at the MHHQ was nearing the ends of their reserves, even with heavy doses of coffee for the humans and energy boosters for the reploids. Two straight days of fighting and the aftereffects—three, for some—had worn their nerves raw.

Cain rubbed at his eyebrows and willed what was left of his migraine to disappear. The medication Hazil had given him had taken the edge off and left a dull roar in its place. "Okay, let's hear the damages."

Commander Zero Omega had returned four hours before, leaving the evening of New York's relatively calm night to the rest of Special Unit 0 and New York's own capable Regional Hunters and MSWAT divisions. As he'd mumbled upon arrival, _"They've got that green MSWAT reploid on call. He can handle things in his city."_ Now back with Cain at the MHHQ, the Crimson Hunter looked over the datapad in his hand, reviewing the incoming data.

"Looks like we lucked out this time. It was mostly small skirmishes, a few rabble rousers. The only major flashpoint was Mexico City where you dispatched the 17th Unit."

"Casualties?"

"The 17th Unit lost three of its members. Another twelve were warped to the Medical Bay for emergency repairs. The 11th took some hits from some incendiaries in a series of car bombings by Kotobuki, the 13th had some wounded as well. Other units have lesser degrees of sustained damage." Zero tucked the datapad under his arm and sighed. "It could have been a lot worse."

"And no sign of old Sigma." Cain added. "Who knows? Maybe he's gone for good."

"You really believe that?" Zero blinked.

"I'm an optimist. I have to believe that." The old man dismissed the argument. "So when will all our people be back?"

"Another six hours." The Crimson Hunter said. "Give or take the stragglers."

"So they'll be home for lunch." Now back to his perky self, Cain got up and headed for the door. "I'm turning in for a catnap. Come and get me before the party."

"What party?"

"The one you're planning at _The Last Round_." Cain smirked. "You know you can't hide things from me, Zero."

"Never could." Zero shook his head.

* * *

_Medical Bay_

_1:30 P.M._

The counterpoint to the almost feral Zero Omega was the calculating and methodical Mega Man X. His shift done, the situation in Mexico City brought to its bloody resolution, he trudged through the hissing doors of Hazil's Medical Bay with fresh scars and battle damage.

One of the fins on his Retribution Armor's helmet was bent inwards, as if somebody had smashed a hammer against the side of his head. The rest of the armor had scorch marks from plasma damage and explosives.

Hazil had seen X show up after a mission more torn up than how he was now, but he still whistled. "You get in a train wreck?"

"Just about." The Blue Bomber of 21XX closed his eyes and concentrated. In a blink of light, the red and white Retribution Armor from the Second Maverick Uprising disappeared. He reappeared in his regular blue armor, more pristine in his appearance.

"I didn't think you'd have to use _that_ set." Hazil suggested. "The Paladin Armor's usually been enough to get you through the tough spots."

"This time around, I needed the second supershot." Looking as tired as Hazil felt, X looked around the room full of recuperating Hunters. "How are my men doing?"

"Galvan's in a prolonged stasis, and Cosine is going to need a replacement arm, but all in all, your wounded are going to pull through. I'm sorry I can't say the same for the dead." Hazil gestured to an open seat. "Siddown and we'll take care of your diagnostics quick."

X collapsed back in the chair, his eyes glazed and unfocused. "I don't get reploids, Hazil. Why do they do this?"

Hazil ran a jack out from his medical scanner and reached for X's right arm. X morphed it into a Buster and held it out, and Hazil connected to the side I/O port. "Why do they do what?" Hazil asked, falling into X's unique 'them' pronoun use.

"Why do they celebrate this Godforsaken day?" X demanded, a flash of anger finally coming to the surface. "Are they that blind? That stupid? Don't they realize that all of this only makes things worse for reploidkind?"

"I think every reploid knows that." The physician reassured him. "But I also think there are some who don't care…or are willing to risk the consequences."

"Why?" X searched Hazil's face for a glimmer of understanding. "What's the point in celebrating a holiday based on the murdering rampage of the worst Maverick ever?"

"Because he did something." Hazil blurted out. He blinked twice, sifting through that hasty answer before accepting its veracity. "Right or wrong, X, Sigma believed his war was going to save the reploid race. He gave up everything he had, he threw away his life, and he gave reploids an example. An example of what, that's to each person, I guess. He went Maverick, and we're not sure how reploids do, but he did. Maybe that's why Mavericks celebrate June Fourth. He didn't just complain about the problem. He did something about it."

"And now the Hunters have to put out all the brushfires he set off." X added. "He's no hero, Hazil. There are no heroes, just mourners. Reploids shouldn't worship him."

"Probably not." The medical reploid agreed, pulling the plug out of X's Buster port. "But who else do they have to look up to?"

Hazil's eyes met X's, and the unspoken conclusion to that sentence passed between them anyhow.

_Who else do they have to look up to? You?_

"It's been a long couple of days, Hazil." X resolved sadly. "Just tell me that I'm still alive so I can go offline for a while."

Hazil opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by a sound that X had never heard within the walls of the MHHQ before. A tiny wail.

A baby's wail.

Stunned, he looked at Hazil. "What was that?"

"Ah. Right." Hazil rolled his eyes. "While you were out, I got to deliver a baby. Bulldog brought in a pregnant woman he rescued, and she popped. Took her four hours of labor to get the damn thing out."

"…Could I take a look?"

"Hm. Suppose so. Sounds like it's awake, anyways. Come on back."

Hazil guided X to a set of raised cloth barricades off on one side of the Medical Bay. They wandered past a host of beds of other Hunters, some awake and others still unconscious before reaching it, and a few of the alert ones gave X respectful nods in passing.

X hardly noticed them as Hazil pushed back the doorway curtain and rolled inside. There, looking tired but at peace was the young Japanese woman who was now a mother, and her small baby, wrapped in a borrowed blanket.

"Hey there, Momiki. How's the baby doing?" Hazil asked her.

The mother smiled. "Well." She replied. "I named him. Kazuku."

"Kazuku, huh?" Hazil thought about it. "Eh, it works. I brought a visitor with me. Kazuku, this is Mega Man X."

Mutely, X walked up to the bedside of mother and child. He managed to give a respectful nod after a few moments.

The baby made a fainter gurgling coo and scrunched its face in tighter, trying to cling to sleep. Momiki was more receptive to her visitor. "Mega Man X? Thank you."

"For what?" X asked unsurely.

"For being a Maverick Hunter." Momiki explained. "You keep us safe. You all do."

X took the compliment in stride, and Hazil reached down to check the baby's pulse with a steady hand.

"Yeah, he's a good, strong boy." Hazil grunted.

Momiki gestured to X. "Would you like to hold him?"

"Me?" X's eyes widened. "Hold _him?_ You sure?" Momiki offered Kazuku up, and after a moment's pause, X unsteadily accepted the newborn into his arms. Kazuku mumbled a whine before falling silent, at rest with the Blue Bomber of 21XX.

Hazil watched as a change fell over him. In only a few seconds, the drained look on X's face disappeared. A gentle smile filled it, and he nodded.

"Thank you for this, Hazil."

"For showing you the kid?"

"Yes." X gave Kazuku back to Momiki and stepped back reverently. "I'm so used to death, I forgot what new life looked like." X folded his arms and laughed a bit. "I may not understand why Mavericks do the things they do…but at least I remember now what I'm fighting for."

He turned around and left, and a moment later, Hazil rolled after him.

His words echoed in the front of the doctor's mind.

* * *

_4:30 P.M._

Hazil rested in his private office, staring at his computer. The camera embedded in the top part of the screen's casing blinked its blue light every few seconds, the only indication of activity in an otherwise quiet room. Ordinarily, he would ramble on at length about whatever came to mind for the benefit of his I.M.E. penpal, but after the fretful resolution of another Reploid Independence Day, the physician found he had more on his mind than blood and death and suffering. He didn't quite know what to do with it.

Uneasily, his fingers drummed on the surface of his desk, and his eyes went between the wall-mounted clock and his computer.

"Some things about this place never change, Frank." Hazil finally announced, triggering his video message to begin recording. "I've seen Maverick Hunters come and go. I've seen atrocities go answered and unanswered. I've wondered if the reploid race and the human race are two fractured sides of the same coin, and if we're all gonna be shuffled off to buffalo; still don't have an answer for that one." He brought his hand up and rested his forehead against it. "But until yesterday, I'd never bothered to see the potential. It took me bringing a life into this world, instead of sending one off, to do it.

"This place, Maverick Hunter Headquarters…it's not much, but for those of us who work here, it's home. There are some days I've wondered if I do any good at all. I'm not asking that question today, not now. There's a mother and her kid sleeping off the ordeal of childbirth in my Medical Bay, and most of the staff, some of the Hunters even, are fawning all over them. I wouldn't be surprised if they try and make the kid a mascot or something. It'd be just like this motley group of rejects to do something that crazy. I understand why they're doing it, too. This baby being born here, it's more than just a change of pace between life and death. It's living proof for why the Maverick Hunters do what they do.

"Everybody tries to find meaning in their existence. _Why do we fight? Why do we suffer? What does it all build towards?_ This year, we all got a glimmer of that universal insight. It's the future, Frank. Reploids yet to be activated. Kids yet to be born. And maybe that's only part of the big answer, but it's a part. Getting even that much gives them the will to fight on." Hazil leaned his torso back up straight and winked at the camera. "And me? Maybe it'll keep me from dipping into the scotch I keep locked up in my cabinet. At least for now. That's not to say there won't be some drinking yet, though. Zero's throwing an "After-chaos" party in the pub we have here on base, and as usual, everybody's invited."

Hazil reached for his keyboard. "So, Dr. Lassky, that's all we here at the MHHQ have to say to you. For now."

He tapped the stop button, and the message window flashed its **End Recording** message. Satisfied with the letter, Hazil attached it to a blank E-Mail and sent it off to Dr. Frank Lassky.

On his way out of the Medical Bay, he paused and gave one last look around a room where life and death were constantly at odds with one another. Today, it seemed, life had won a round. Hazil chortled and rolled for the door.

"See you next mission."


	7. 2012: Story for a Princess

_**MEGA MAN X: THE REPLOID INDEPENDENCE DAY FILES**_

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

**2012: Story for a Princess**

* * *

_Cossack Memorial Orphanage_

_Neo Arcadia_

_February 8th, 2110 C.E._

_7:09 P.M._

"Marcus Henderson." The reploid doing bedchecks paused and glanced up from her datapad, sighting the energetic 8 year old scrunched up on the end of his bed. "Here." She nodded, and marked his name off, then swept the room again. "Simon? Yes, you're here too. Good."

The nursemaid tucked her datapad away and nodded to the children with a smile. "Now you all sleep well, okay?"

"Yes, Missus Nova." The boys all echoed back at her. Sighing, the new model reploid smoothed out her pale green smock and exited the room, turning off the lights as she went. Like all reploids in Neo Arcadia, Nova's physical structure was slimmed down and weakened to more human-like levels of ability. That change in philosophy had been a long time in coming; a hundred years ago, humanity had opted to make reploids bigger, faster, stronger, more durable, and more powerful depending on their presumed needs. Apparently one reploid had even been made two stories high, though there was little left of the historical record to support that ridiculous claim. No, reploids of the 22nd Century had been built to a different standard; power over efficiency.

In the 23rd Century, with an ongoing shortage of precious Energen, the lifeblood for almost every piece of machinery and most reploids, efficiency had been forced to the forefront of concern.

Nova moved across the hallway of the orphanage's second floor to the quarters for girls 9 years and younger. Unlike the boys' section, this room had only three occupants.

"All right, you three, it's time for…" Nova called out as the door slid open to grant her access. She paused after a quick mental headcount. Sarah was here, as was Keiko, but…

With a sigh, Nova tapped the button on her wrist communicator bracelet to activate it. "Youth Caretaker Nova here. Ciel Seria has disappeared again."

_"Neo Arcadia Central Authority speaking. We're running a trace on her RFID tag now."_

Nova waited impatiently as the CA watch officer ran his trace. A few seconds later than she expected it to take, the operator responded. _"Caretaker Nova, we are not receiving a signal from your missing child."_

"What?" Nova frowned. "At all? Well, she couldn't have gotten far."

_"Her permanent record shows a remarkable aptitude for understanding and manipulating Neo Arcadia systems. Don't worry, we'll find her, even if…"_

_ **"This is X. Central Authority, stand down from your alert. I'll find her."**_

_ "I…" _Both Nova and the operator from CA were stunned at the intrusion over their comm line. To have the hero of the Maverick Wars and the founder of Neo Arcadia suddenly take a personal interest in anything but the larger issues he usually was faced with was unusual. Still, he was the ultimate authority in the idyllic enclosed metropolis, and one didn't go questioning the orders of a living legend.

_"Confirmed, Master X. We leave it in your hands."_

_**"Very well." **_The oldest robot on the planet replied, chuckling. _**"Don't worry, Nova. I'll get her back to you."**_

"Yes, Master X." The caretaker reploid stammered. "I…I know you will. But how will you find her? Her RFID signal is offline!"

_**"I have a pretty good idea where she might have gone."**_ X answered cryptically, and the connection dropped out.

Nova lowered her wrist communicator away from her head and glanced at the two giggling girls left in the room. "All right, you two. That's enough for one night. Get into bed."

"Oooh, Ciel's gonna be in so much trouble…" Sarah singsonged, pulling on the sleeve of her pajama top.

"Oh, like the trouble you two will be in if you don't listen to your Nanny Nova?" The caretaker reploid demanded.

Sarah and Keiko slid under the covers faster than Nova had ever thought possible.

* * *

Most of the world lay in ruins. A century of fighting, which was more like two centuries after all had been said and done, had exacted its horrible toll. The oceans were polluted, the earth was barren and desolate, and most places seemed more like a graveyard than the world of humanity.

The damage was not yet irreversible: Eurasia could have hit harder than it did, certainly, and the battle that had followed that unfortunate, desperate, gambit had been muted until the last gasp of Sigma and his Maverick followers. Damage had been done, though. It would be generations before the earth looked as Mega Man X remembered it, back when the world was green and full of life. Now, even Treeborgs struggled to stay alive.

At least in Neo Arcadia, a city build on top of the ruins of New Tokyo, life went on. Here, there was power, utilities, parks and gardens. Protected by Mega Man X and his followers, humanity and reploidkind were sustained. Here, they finally co-existed with a degree of success no other settlement had had in a century's time. Nowhere was that miracle clearer than in Falcon Park, a smaller Treeborg laden spot of tranquility on the city's west end.

A young girl in a pink shirt, pink pants, and pink shoes to match sat beside an old man. A bag of birdseed rested between them, and they took turns throwing out handfuls to the pigeons that wandered in front of their park bench.

"Yes, the world has certainly changed, little miss." The old man sighed. He pulled on his white beard, then adjusted his auditory pickups. This was possible because he was not human, but reploid.

"For good? Or bad?" The young blond-haired girl asked innocently.

Her friend chuckled. "I think you meant to say for better or worse, Ciel."

"Oh." She wrinkled her nose up as she considered the new words. "So…better or worse?"

"A little of both, I'd suspect." He answered humorously. "There's still that scuffle with the Dark Elf going on, but I've heard Master X and his three guardians will end it soon enough. It's quieter these days, compared to when I was younger."

"I thought reploids didn't get old."

"Oh, we _all_ get older, little Ciel." He hummed. "It's just not everyone wishes to show their age like I do."

"Why?"

"Well, I…that is, erm…" The old reploid scratched at his chin thoughtfully, and was spared an awkward answer when a rustling in the trees overhead caught his attention. A green armored and winged reploid crashed through the foliage and landed gracefully in a three point stance. The pigeons scattered at the disturbance, and the newcomer rose to his feet.

"Ah, perfect timing, Mr. Halperia." The old reploid clapped his hands together.

Coolly, the green reploid glanced back at him. "My name is Harpuia, Andrew. You know that."

"Oh, yes, yes." Andrew sighed, touching his forehead. "My mistake."

Harpuia's expression softened as his gaze settled on Ciel. "Ciel, have you been listening to Andrew's tall tales again?"

"Nuh-uh." Ciel replied indignantly. "They're true!"

Harpuia sighed impatiently and tapped a recessed button on the side of his helmet. "Harpuia to X. I've found her. Localize on my signal."

The little girl pouted. "Am I in trouble?"

"Yes." The duelist of the skies said curtly.

"Oh, no she isn't, Harpy." A chiding and distinctly feminine voice offered in reply. Out of the shadows strolled a voluptuous reploid woman in dark blue and turquoise highlights. She smirked at him, resting one arm across her other, which had the intended side effect of accentuating her bosom.

Harpuia scowled. "I've told you to stop calling me that, Leviathan."

"Oh, you're so cute when you pretend to be angry." She went on, winking at Ciel. "He likes to think he's the boss of us, but he's just a big softie, Mistress Ceria."

Harpuia drew his face in close to hers and glared. "Shut. Up."

Leviathan smiled, craned her neck slightly, and kissed his cheek. The winged Guardian recoiled, wide-eyed. "What the Hell was that?"

A blue beam of warplight crashed behind Harpuia as he swore, and the leader of Neo Arcadia himself, Mega Man X, appeared. Like most reploids, he had undergone a retrofit. His new body was slimmer than his former battle-hardened armor, though he maintained the same height. As a mark of his office, he dressed in a long blue smock that resembled a laboratory coat. Only his helmet remained unchanged, as much an emblem now as it was in an older, more hopeful age. "Watch your language, Harpuia. We do not swear in front of children."

"My apologies, Master X. Leviathan…she kissed me." Harpuia sheepishly explained.

Amused, X looked to Andrew and Ciel. "Is this true?"

"Yup!" Ciel chirped. "On his face!"

"As your second in command, Master, I demand to know what disciplinary action you intend to follow!" Harpuia hotly shouted.

X scratched just under the rim of his helmet. "Well, I could tell you two to get married if you're going to go around kissing each other."

Harpuia blanched as Leviathan laughed. "Surely you're not serious."

"Don't call me Shirley." X replied. "And no, Harpuia, I'm not. You're serious enough for two people. You need to lighten up." He looked to Leviathan. "And you could stand to turn down the charm every now and then."

Harpuia shrugged, easing off his hackles a little. "I will take your advice under consideration. For now, I must return to my previous rendezvous with Fefnir."

"Fefnir?" Leviathan put a finger to her lips and angled her waist. "Where is that firecracker, anyhow?"

"Helping Hyleg to seal one of the Baby Elves away. Fefnir has reported anomalous readings he wishes me to investigate."

"The Dark Elf?" X questioned.

"Perhaps." Harpuia nodded. "If the lead pans out, I will call in reinforcements." In a flash, Harpuia launched himself into the sky and flew off.

Andrew chuckled, tapping his walking stick on the ground. "You young people. Always rushing this way and that."

X turned to the old-looking reploid, and he smiled. "Hello, Andrew. How've you been?"

"Oh, I can't complain too much, Mr. Mega Man X." Andrew said back cheerfully. "I'm still alive, after all. Thanks to you."

"And you get to fraternize with Ciel, which you always enjoy."

"Immensely so. Not every person likes to hear me prattle on about the past. I'm surprised you don't do it more often, X."

"Never felt the need to." X mused. He glanced to Leviathan. "Levy, could you make sure Andrew gets home safely? I'll take care of Ciel."

"As you command, Master." Leviathan stepped over to Andrew and helped him up. "Come on, old man. Let's get you back into bed."

"Bed already?" Andrew rambled on. "My how the young women are forward these days. Still, if you were looking for someone experienced, you're with the right man."

"Oh, brother. Were you always this much of a pickup artist?"

"Actually, my dear, I was a baker…"

Leviathan and old Andrew disappeared into the night, leaving X alone with the young girl.

"I like Andrew. He's silly." Ciel smiled.

"So do I." X agreed softly. "Tell me, Ciel, how is it the police couldn't find you?"

Guiltily, Ciel looked down.

"Ciel." X repeated. "How?"

"I made my headband sing different." She mutedly answered.

X blinked at her admission. "You reprogrammed the RFID tag in your headband?" Though he tried to sound disapproving, his amazement at the young girl's technical skill rang out clearly. "How…I mean, why did you do that?"

"I wann't to see Andrew." She looked up at X. "Are you mad at me?"

"No, I'm not angry." He reassured her. "But I was worried. You left the orphanage, nobody knew where you were."

"I don't like it there. Wanna stay with you." She pouted. "You're my daddy."

X ruffled her hair good-naturedly. "Ciel, I'm not human. I can't be your father, remember?"

"You love me?" She asked, demonstrating remarkable logical thought.

X sighed. "I take care of you, don't I?"

"That's what daddies do, X." Ciel insisted. "Don't take me back to the orph'nage. Please?"

Still not sold on the idea, but too soft-hearted to deny the innocent request, X stepped back from the bench and held out his hand. "Fine. But just for tonight. Tomorrow, we'll see what happens."

Grinning in victory, Ciel hopped down and took X's hand, letting the legendary hero lead her out of the park. "Can I have ice cream?"

"No."

"Can I watch a movie?"

"No."

"Can I…"

"Ciel." X sighed, and she let the matter drop.

"Sorry, X."

"Just what am I going to do with you, girl?"

"I dunno. Pancakes?"

The founder of Neo Arcadia laughed again. "Maybe tomorrow morning."

* * *

The Guardians had often remarked to each other how strange their master's habitation preferences were. His private quarters had an energen restoration bed to normalize his microfusion tank's power levels, but more often than not, he forewent it in favor of a plush mattress in the corner of his room. It was strange for reploids to imitate a human's sleeping habits, and Harpuia was especially doubtful of X's claim that many reploids preferred it a century ago. Still, X had never shown any deleterious effects from the tradition, and his age still commanded more respect than concern.

Outside of the bed, X also kept a hardlinked workstation that let him overlook Neo Arcadia, and a fishbowl made out of a turtle shell. He seemed to smile whenever he looked at the goldfish circling around in it, though he'd never shared the joke with anyone. Now it was the 4 year old Ciel Seria which was being put to bed underneath the warm blankets.

"Did you brush your teeth?" X asked her quietly.

"Yes." She fidgeted under the covers.

"Did you comb your hair?"

"Yes." She said, exasperated.

"Good." X leaned back and sat on a small chair beside the bed. "Now, I'll tell you one bedtime story."

"Two!"

"One." X refused her, raising a finger to silence the argument. "A good one."

"Mmph, fine."

"How about Snow White and…"

"You did that one!" Ciel blurted out.

X blinked. "Oh. Well, then. How about Cinderel…"

"No."

"Rumplestil…"

"No!"

X put a hand to his forehead and sighed. "All right, which one would you like to hear?"

"Tell me one about you, X."

"About me?" He repeated, amused.

"Yeah! When you saved the world!"

"Oh, that's boring stuff." He dismissed the notion casually. "You wouldn't want to hear it."

"Uh-huh! I would, too!" The young girl insisted.

"Hm." X thought for a moment. "Well, I don't exactly like to talk about myself." He paused, and before he had time to consider the decision, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "Would you settle for a story about someone else?"

"Who?" Ciel asked suspiciously. She sat up and crossed her arms.

A subtle shift overtook X as he argued with himself. Should he carry through on his first thought, or deflect it, bury it, where the past belonged? The shadow of darkness a century old loomed out from his face. X wobbled back and forth in his chair, caught up in the currents of his memories. It took a solid measure of concentration to pull himself out of it, and it was the firm weight pressed against his thigh that served as the catalyst. He decided.

"I am going to show you something." X told Ciel, his tone guarded. "And you must promise me that you will tell no one of it."

As all children did when an adult expressed high importance and great secrecy, the wide-eyed girl nodded slowly. Satisfied, X reached inside of his blue longcoat and reached for a metallic object magnetically clamped to his leg. Though he hadn't removed it for years, it detached easily. He pulled it from underneath his robes and displayed it to Ciel: a silver-white cylinder with a recessed grip, which he wrapped his hand around reverently.

"This was the weapon that belonged to the most powerful Maverick Hunter that ever lived."

Hesitantly, Ciel stretched a hand out to it, pausing to look at X for reassurance. The venerable leader smiled and opened his hand so she could get at it. "It's all right, you can touch it. It has no power cell in it now."

Ciel picked it up, frowning at the simple looking device. "Is it a…a beem saver, like Harpuia has?"

"I think you meant beam _saber_. And no, Ciel. This one is special. It was called the Z-Saber."

"Why?"

"Because it belonged to a ro…to a reploid whose name started with Z. His name was Zero, Ciel. And he was my very best friend."

Caught up in the smell of his storytelling, Ciel eagerly handed the Z-Saber back to him, as though possessing it might jog X's memory.

"Zero was…a born fighter. While I took to it with reluctance, he never doubted. He never hesitated. When he saw an enemy, he cut it down. His name commanded respect among all the Maverick Hunters. The whisper of it brought the fear of oblivion to the Mavericks we fought against. But there was more to him than a warrior's spirit. He had a spirit of mercy in him as well…and he could be as gentle to the people we were trying to save as he was merciless to our enemies."

X rolled the beam saber between his hands, reassured by its weight. "Come to think of it, there was one mission where that was exceptionally true." Mega Man X smiled and closed his eyes. "The year was 2127. Eighty years, ago, Ciel. There was a tremendous crisis happening in a place that no longer exists. A place called Dopplertown…"

* * *

_September 17th, 2127_

_Southwest Cambodia, Dopplertown_

_Madrigal Homes District_

One didn't expect to see snow at this latitude, but buildings that had never felt the touch of it before were now plastered with the white and sticky powder. Feet of it was piled up in places, and snowdrifts ran even deeper. Structural fatigue was starting to become an issue in some buildings, and parts of the highway system through it was collapsed. Cyclones of snow and ice swirled angrily upwards from around the district, blending into depressing gray clouds and descending with equal fury.

Two beams of warplight, one red and one blue, burst through the clouds and slammed to the ground. Snow kicked up away from the impact in all directions. When the beams reformed, Mega Man X and Zero Omega stood at the landing site, resplendent after a rush patch job from their medical officer, Hazil.

Zero reached up to his helmet and activated his transceiver. "We've arrived at Point Alpha."

_"Roger that, Commander Zero. Good hunting."_ Chirped the on-call radio operator at the MHHQ, hundreds of kilometers distant.

X lifted his right arm up and summoned his Buster. The bulb quickly and seamlessly took the place of his forearm, and he nodded to Zero. "All right, I'm ready."

"Hell, when aren't you?" The Crimson Hunter joked. "Frankly, I don't understand why you need me here. We still have to secure the airfield, before they ship out any more weapons."

"Because, Zero, locating and rescuing civilian hostages takes precedence, and this sector had the heaviest concentration of civilians."

"According to Dr. Doppler's last released census, and you'll forgive me if I don't take that Maverick bastard's word for it." Zero complained.

"Well, we know one thing for sure. The Maverick in charge here calls himself Blizzard Buffalo, and he's responsible for the climate change." X pulled up a small holographic emitter, displaying the cumbersome reploid's image.

Zero squinted at it. "They didn't build him for looks. What did he do here before things went to heck?"

X checked the Maverick's records and cringed. "Of course. He was an ice sculptor."

Zero slapped himself in the forehead. "I hate goddamn artists. One bad day and they decide to blow up the world. All right, how do you want to handle this?"

X did a double take and glanced to his friend. "Don't I usually ask you that?"

Zero gave his head a shake and summoned his own Buster, larger and more powerful than X's Mark 17. "X, at this point, we're equals. I think you've got enough authority and experience to make the decisions. You're in command of the 17th Unit, for Chrissakes, so command."

X smiled thinly. "Fair enough. All right. I'm going to follow the region's jammer signal. If Doppler and his commanders are following the usual playbook, Blizzard Buffalo should be sitting right on top of the thing."

"Decent plan. So what am I doing?"

"Search and rescue."

"Hang on a second." Zero protested. "How come you get the fun job?"

"Are you arguing with your orders, soldier?"

Zero sighed and conceded the point. "Nice to see you've grown a pair."

"These dickholes played us all for fools and nearly wiped out our base." X growled. "I want to draw blood."

"Then get to it, Commander X." Zero saluted, mindful of the rage his friend was feeling. "I'll see if I can dig up any survivors."

X nodded, and was about to run off into the storm when Zero stopped him. "And X?"

"Yeah?"

"Call me…if you need backup. These guys are playing hardball."

X nodded again. "I'll remember that." He dashed off before Zero could interrupt again.

On his own, with a whiteout swirling around him, Zero Omega braced his systems with an additional jolt of circulatory antifreeze. One of the benefits of being a reploid, he incorrectly told himself.

"Now where the Hell do I go first?"

* * *

Even the GDC's spy satellites proved useless in the search; a jamming beam being produced by the airfield cut off any electronic intercepts, and worse, the aftereffect blinded their thermal sensors. Zero was left with the maddeningly slow method of venturing into one structure after another and using the tried and true method of calling out for survivors and then getting blindsided by patrolling mechaniloids. He kept his Buster and beam saber fully charged after the second ambush, which allowed him to neutralize threats quickly. Hazil would have to replace his plasma capacitors sooner than the medical reploid would like, but the old fellow's grumpiness was the least of his worries.

"Let's just see what's behind door number seven." Zero said to himself. Removing his beam saber from his backpack recharge port, he unleashed an overpowered wave attack through the heavy garage doors of another residential building. The roiling green plasma caused the door to buckle on its hinges and the one-two punch of his double Buster shot finished the job, smashing it open.

With snow blowing in behind him, Zero stepped through the opening and walked down into the darkness. His beam saber cast a faint luminescence, and being careful not to stare directly at the weapon, Zero used the makeshift torch to guide his way.

"All right, Mavericks. If you're going to start shooting at me, now's the time." He called out warily. Only his echo and then dead silence came back at him. Zero paused a moment longer, then made a run through the space…a parking garage, by the look of it. There were plenty of personal hovercars and one minibus that bore the markings of the Dopplertown public transportation fleet. In comparison to other buildings he'd gone through, this one seemed untouched by the ravages of conflict.

"I guess nobody's home." Ready to call it a bust, Zero started to turn for his self-made exit. The sound of an old-fashioned latch clicking shut stopped him in his tracks. He whirled towards the sound and sighted a metal door on the side of the garage. A quick burst of dash thrusters and a kick with all his inertia broke it apart, and Zero found himself at the bottom of a stairwell.

A loud **click** overhead made him raise his Buster, and the Crimson Hunter found himself in a standoff with a lone reploid in soft green body armor. Male and humanoid, albeit one without a helmet. The weapon in his hand got Zero's attention: A magpistol. It was relatively new technology, and deadly at close range. The reploid knew what he was doing with it, too; held away from his body by both hands, his arms were braced in a shooter's posture. If Zero could guess, the weapon's electromagnetic acceleration barrel was pointed right at his forehead.

Zero kept his Buster pointed up, but uncharged. "Hey there." The reploid, his black hair trimmed short, offered a single short nod in reply. "Are you a Maverick?" Zero asked innocently.

The reploid didn't move. "Are you?"

"Hardly. I'm with the Maverick Hunters." Zero's eyes adjusted a bit more, giving him a better look at the fellow. The color scheme reminded him of that MSWAT officer in New York, but this one was taller, lankier. Not a brawler by any stretch of the imagination. "Who are you?"

"I _was_ a painter." The gunman responded evenly. "What's your name?"

"Zero. Commander of Special Unit 0, Maverick Hunters."

"Yeah, I've heard of you." The reploid finally started to lower his gun, and Zero mirrored the stand-down, dismissing his Buster. "So what are you doing here?"

"Looking for survivors." Zero said. "Have you seen anyone else?"

"Yeah." The reploid nodded his head up the stairwell. "I've gotten everyone I could find up on the fourth floor, away from the windows. We're just hunkered down, waiting for this storm to blow over."

"Hate to say it, Bob, but this snow is going to be a problem for a while."

"Bob?" Zero's counterpart questioned.

"You didn't give me your name. I just picked one that was easy to remember. And you kinda look like a Bob."

'Bob' grunted. "Fine. Well, come on then. Let's show you who you're trying to save."

Up the stairs and through another doorway, Zero's new friend Bob led the way. In a minute's time, the Crimson Hunter was looking at a pitiful assembly of humans and reploids huddled in blankets and doing everything in their power to keep warm. A headcount revealed thirty altogether.

"This is everyone I could find, Mr. Hunter." Bob said coolly.

"Could there be more?"

"Doubtful." The green reploid said gravely. "The Maverick sentries were…very thorough." The huddled survivors looked up at Zero, searching his face for some signal of hope.

"Don't worry, we'll get you out of here. I'm with the Maverick Hunters." Zero reassured them.

"That's doubtful." Bob dampened the mood. "None of us reploids have warp generators, and the only vehicle big enough to get us out of here doesn't have any energen left in its fuel cells."

"That minibus down in the garage?" Zero asked. Bob gave him a nod, and Zero pursed his lips. "All that means is we have to get a fresh one. Anyone know where we could find a spare?"

"The central bus depot would have a couple." A patchwork reploid offered. "But it's three kilometers away, deep in Maverick territory."

Zero brought up his holomap of the region on his armband and walked over to the survivor. "Show it to me." The reploid indicated the depot on the map, and Zero logged the location. "Thank you. Don't worry, we'll have you all clear of Dopplertown real soon."

"Please hurry." A middle-aged woman begged him. "We're freezing, and we don't dare use any power to start up the heaters."

Zero knew why they took that precaution; any watchful Maverick keeping an eye on the Dopplertown power grid would instantly know where to find them. He gave the civilians one more salute and went to the stairs again.

Bob stayed on the path with him, looking displeased. "You must be crazy. You plan to traverse three kilometers of hostile ground, infiltrate a facility that is by now heavily guarded, and come back alive while lugging a bus-sized fuel cell? Alone?"

"Hey, I do this kind of thing every day." Zero retorted, stepping into the darkness of the garage. He went to the minibus and noted the battery model, then veered for his self-made entrance. "And besides, Bob, I'm not doing this alone. You're coming with me."

Bob blinked. "Pardon?"

"You heard me."

"That doesn't mean I agreed with you."

"I saw how you held that magpistol." Zero told him, stepping outside into the blizzard. It had slowed a bit: One or two of the storm generators must have been shut down. "Something tells me you're more of a fighter than you care to admit."

"I told you, I'm an artist. Paintings and the like."

"If you say so." Zero squinted his eyes and stared out into the distance.

"Just what are you doing now?"

"Looking for our ride."

"We've been cut off from help for a full day. Where do you think a 'ride' is going to come from?"

Zero ignored the question and readied his Buster. He fired off a single small plasmaburst that vanished into the distance, then ignited his beam saber. "Three, two, one…" He countered down slowly. As he did, a faint thrum grew louder, shifting into the roar of an engine that masked the howling wind.

Finally bursting through the clouds of snow, a Maverick Snow Rider patroller on his Snow Slider snowmobile aimed the nose of his machine at Zero for a ramming attack. Effortlessly, Zero sidestepped the blow and swung his saber in a horizontal slice.

The Rider's head flew one direction, and its body and the snowmobile went another, crashing into a snowbank.

Bob irritably stepped around Zero and headed to the snowmobile, pulling it out of the drift. "You could warn me when you're doing to do a stunt like that."

"Ah, sure." Zero smirked and stowed his saber, then righted the vehicle and removed the corpse. "Watch out the next time I light my saber. It means somebody's going to die." He hopped into the driver's seat of the snowmobile and glanced up. "You coming?"

Bob shook his head, but climbed on behind Zero. Together, civilian and Hunter rode into the storm.

* * *

Even though the blizzard had died down somewhat, visibility was still poor. Squinting over Zero's shoulder, Bob could only see seven meters out. At the speeds they were going, that meant the Crimson Hunter would only have a fraction of a second to react if something suddenly appeared out of the gloom.

If Zero was concerned about that, he didn't show it. His hair whipped back behind him, and only by keeping a hand up to block that tied golden mane did Bob keep that limited perception. "Did you ever think about switching to a regular helmet?" He shouted at the back of Zero's head. Zero turned around slightly and grinned.

"And ruin my perm? Not hardly!" The Crimson Hunter lifted his left arm up and brought up his map of the region. "We're about 200 meters from the depot." He slowed the snowmobile to a leisurely 50 kph and made a hard right turn, bouncing them off of an iced-over snowdrift. Finally, the large central transportation hub of Dopplertown loomed out of the darkness, a silent behemoth that stretched out to the sides farther than they could see, and stood three stories tall. A row of shutters, plastered by the snow, blocked the entrance to the bus yard and service bays.

Zero stopped the snowmobile at the first shutter and he and Bob got off to examine it. Bob ran a hand over a nearby access panel and cringed. "This place has power, but they've rewritten the access codes."

Zero held his arms down at his sides and started to glow, charging. "Not a problem." Amazed, Bob watched as the aura around Zero went from blue, to yellow, to purple, and finally, an ominous eldritch green. Zero stepped up next to the blocked door, raised up his left arm, and fired. Almost immediately after his first Buster supershot hit, his right hand matched it. A vicious overpowered slice of his beam saber annihilated the weakened metal, and the shutter collapsed. Zero stepped through the hole he'd made and glanced back to Bob. "You coming?"

"Now I see why you never bother looking for a key." Bob remarked, joining him. "How come you don't do that move more often?"

"It takes me seven seconds to charge that attack up." Zero said. "How often do you think I have seven seconds to spare?"

Inside the building, they found the power was still on, and a handful of sentry mechaniloids were slowly coming towards them. Zero brandished his saber again and gestured with the blade. "Case in point. Do you know what you're looking for, Bob?"

"Yes." The other reploid said suspiciously. "Why?"

"Because I'm going to have my hands full cleaning this mess up. Get going."

Taking the hint, Bob ran away from Zero, then kicked his boots up and ignited the dash thrusters. Zero snorted and looked towards his own challenge. "Just an artist. My ass, Bob."

The nearest aerial sentry dove down on him, and Zero lifted up his Buster and fired. The snap shot impacted on its port wing and sheared it off, sending the drone tumbling to the ground in a wild spin. The rest came at Zero en masse, forcing the Crimson Hunter to backpedal. Charging his Buster and wincing as a few lucky shots smashed into his back, Zero set his sights on a tall, deactivated bus.

It would have to do.

"Come on you bastards, keep up!" Zero snarled. They did so, though likely not because of his remark. Dash-jumping at the last, just as his charge aura went purple, Zero bounced off of the bus, backflipped over his pursuers, and landed behind the mad rush.

Stowing his beam saber, Zero fired a Buster doubleshot and annihilated the entire response team. The blasts went on to leave a sizable smoking crater in the bus he'd used as a staging point.

Silence overtook the garage, and Zero nodded approvingly. "That takes care of the Mavericks."

The sound of a single metallic footstep caused Zero to spin around, and he locked stared with a normal-sized, but well-armored Maverick, clad in gold.

"Not quite." His Maverick counterpart remarked, pulling off a reinforced tower shield from his back.

Zero drew his saber and ignited it again. "Seven seconds takes too damn long." He said to himself.

* * *

Maverick and Maverick Hunter circled around each other, sizing up their opponent. Outside of his shield, Zero could also make out the curved hilt of a specialized beam saber, and the construction of his hands and wrist gauntlets made possible glowing orange plasmic discharges that he hurled at Zero to keep the Crimson Hunter off-balance. Zero replied with quick low-level shots of plasma, but the tower shield his opponent wielded blocked them effortlessly.

"So who in the devil are you supposed to be?" Zero demanded.

The gold Maverick smirked. "Pisses you off not knowing, doesn't it? Your dossier on the rebellion here a little blank? But I know all about you, Mr. Hunter. Zero, Commander of the Hunter's elite death squad. At least, up until our surprise attack gutted your base. Combat capabilities include a double Buster system and a beam saber capable of overcharging. No air-dash, though."

"Haven't needed one yet." Zero snipped back. "So what do I call you? Goldbug?"

"Call me Bit." The Maverick bowed slightly being sure to keep the wily Zero in his line of sight. "Technically, I'm not even supposed to be here, but two separate trails of destruction in an area does get our attention."

"Really?" Zero mused. "Sounds like payback's a bitch."

"I wouldn't swagger so much if I were you." Bit snapped. "No doubt, you expect Mega Man X to defeat this sector's Maverick general. I'm sorry to say that he will lose. The age of peace Doppler's so-called vaccine was responsible for has made you Hunters soft! You have forgotten how difficult it is to fight an _infected_ Maverick."

"It doesn't matter to me if a dog is rabid or just plain mean." Zero twirled his saber around, then threw it up into the air and fired a surprise supershot he'd been charging at low power, which masked the sound and the telltale glow.

Bit reacted quickly, ducking behind his shield. The reinforced, plasmaburst resistant surface blunted the attack, scattering tendrils of supercharged gas around and off to the sides. Zero used the momentary distraction to weave in close with a roar of his dash boots, green beam saber raised high for the killing stroke.

"Shit!" Bit leapt backwards, and Zero's saber dug into the ground he'd been standing on, gouging out a massive crater.

Zero rose to his feet, a hard stare on his suddenly stony face. "Rabid or mean, Bit, it's all the same to me. I'll put you down either way."

"Just try it." Bit hissed, drawing out his saber. It glowed a soft purple as it came to life, curved so far back it went beyond a scimitar's tilt. The Maverick leapt into the air and dashed at Zero's head, saber and shield angled to prevent any counterattack. Zero made the attempt anyhow, running at Bit and then sliding underneath the soaring skirmisher. He lashed up with his saber as they passed each other, but the glancing blow only nicked the surface of the irritating tower shield.

Bit landed far away: He'd used quite a lot of boost in his attack. The Maverick turned around and repeated the move again, going low enough that Zero would be gutted if he tried to slide again. Smiling, Zero dashed along the ground to build up speed and then jumped into the air. To Bit's astonishment, he then jumped again, as though he were standing on a platform instead of thin air. His second jump easily cleared Bit's charge, and the Maverick howled as Zero's saber cut into his back, punishing him.

Again they came to rest with space between them. Lurching slightly from his wound, Bit stared at Zero. "How did you do that? A double jump? Nobody can do that!"

"Hey, a man has to have some secrets." Zero lazily swung his saber in front of him, as though he were loosening up before a game. "Care to throw in the towel, Maverick? It'll only get worse from here."

"Never!" Bit came at Zero again, running along the ground.

Zero sighed and drew back his arm. As Bit came in for another charge, Zero let the weapon draw in particulate matter at an accelerated rate. By disabling the safety limiter, he forced his Z-Buster to overcharge. All the power that would have normally been confined to both arms was instead shunted through one, and when Bit was within ten feet, with the air around him screaming for mercy after being drained, Zero fired.

The blast wave engulfed Bit and overwhelmed his golden tower shield. The Maverick screamed as he was flung backwards like a rag doll in a hurricane, and the reinforced wall of metal he had relied on was warped and then snapped in two.

A now smoking and charred Bit slammed into the side of another bus and slumped heavily to the ground. The two halves of his shield impacted the craft on both sides of his head.

Grunting in pain, Bit lurched up to one knee and hurled a globe of plasmic energy towards Zero, keeping the Crimson Hunter from dashing in for the killing blow. Zero tumbled clear of the homing orange energy bolt and raised his Buster. The weapon embedded in his arm was more bark than bite: His last shot had redlined his plasma capacitors and left microscopic fractures in the ruby quartz focusing rod. He couldn't manage more than a level 2 shot, the so-called "Green sizzler."

"What kind of demon are you?" Bit wheezed.

"The kind that gives Mavericks like you nightmares." Zero said, advancing on him. He fired off a low grade plasma bullet, striking Bit in the shoulder. "I died once. I got better." A second shot went into Bit's knee, slagging the armor over the joint. Bit howled, and Zero blasted him dead center in the chest. "I've been stabbed, blown up, mutilated, shot at, stomped on, and none of that has slowed me down. I keep coming no matter what, Bit." Zero stopped when he stood over Bit, his saber pointed at the Maverick's neck. "I never quit."

Bit smiled, and Zero spasmed and felt his body go rigid. Mustering up control of his eyes, he glanced down and saw a ring of paralyzing energy squeezing his torso. "Well, that makes two of us."

"Cheating…bastard." Zero grunted.

"Against the great and terrible Zero, how else should one fight?" Bit hummed. He drew out his purple saber and ignited the blade. "I was told that restraining you was an effective strategy. Nice to see that he isn't completely insane. It must really chafe your hide, having this happen to you a second time. And this time, there's no Mega Man X to save you!"

Bit raised his saber for the killing stroke, only to have the weapon shot out of his hand by a lightning quick bullet. The noise of the shot came a fraction of a second later.

"What the…!" Bit snarled. It was all he mustered before Zero broke free of the confinement field and slashed up with his own sword. He left a thick gash across the Maverick's chest, and Bit screamed. "Damn you, Zero! You'll pay for your insult! You all will!" He disappeared in a beam of warplight, off to lick his wounds.

With the threat ended, Zero stowed his saber and looked behind him into the shadows. "You can come out now, Bob."

The reploid accomplice stepped into the light, a curl of smoke rising from his magpistol.

"Good timing there." Zero complimented him.

"You didn't need my help." Bob argued. "You could have broken out of that field anytime you felt like it."

Zero's respect for the deadeye marksman grew at the shrewd observation. "True. You beat me to the punch by a quarter second. It worked out, though." He gestured at Bob. "Did you find the power cell we needed?"

"Yeah. It's loaded up in the snowmobile already. And the blizzard's started to die down. Looks like the other storm generators were taken offline."

"That's X for you." Zero smiled. "No style, but he gets results. Come on, Bob. Let's go. We've got a busload of civilians to get clear of this mess."

* * *

With the visibility restored, Zero and his helper made it back to the survivors in record time. A quick battery swap was all it took to get the bus ready, and with Bob doing the ushering, the Dopplertown civilians were soon loaded up.

The bud idled outside the ruined building as Zero and his green-armored friend shook hands. "Thank you. They really thought that there was no hope left." Bob started.

"It's why we're here. Protect the innocent, neutralize the Mavericks." Zero shrugged off the praise. "Just drive straight east. Once you cross the border and are out of Dopplertown territory, GDC search and rescue will be standing by with air support to get you to a refugee site."

"That's good to hear." Bob exhaled. "But something tells me I won't be painting for a long time."

"Now that you've stepped into a pair of old shoes, you mean." Zero inferred. "What were you before? GDC? A sniper in some military?"

Bob hesitated. "If I told you, they'd find me and drag me back for disciplinary action."

"Maybe." Zero conceded. "But if you joined the Hunters, I'd personally guarantee any desertion charges you're facing would be stopped."

"Are you really that hard up for Maverick Hunters?" Bob raised an eyebrow.

"We're starved for them." Zero chuckled. "It doesn't change the fact I'd love to have you on my squad."

"I'm really more of a solo artist." Bob said. "But I'll think about it. Right now, I have to get these people out of here."

"If you change your mind, just get to New Tokyo." Zero crossed his arms. "One thing, though. You never told me your name. What do I call you?"

'Bob' thought about it for a moment. "Call me Guernica."

"Guernica?" Zero echoed. "Is that your real name?"

"It's my name now."

"What does it mean?"

"It's from an old painting. Look it up; you'll find it ironic."

Zero nodded. "All right. Take care of yourself, Guernica."

"You too, Zero. You've got one Hell of a mess here to deal with."

"Don't I know it." Zero grumbled. Guernica gave him one last nod and headed for the bus. The door closed a few seconds after he got aboard, and the transport rumbled and drove off on the ice-covered road.

Zero straightened up a bit and watched the bus disappear. He waited until the rumble of its driveshaft faded, and then spoke. "Hey, X."

Behind him, footsteps that had failed to be silent gave up the ruse entirely, plodding to stand beside him. Mega Man X sighed. "How did you know I was there?"

"That's my little secret." Zero chuckled. "How was Blizzard Buffalo?"

"Big, slow, and heavily armored."

"In other words, an easy kill."

"Oh yeah." X said, before he caught himself. "If any kill is easy, I mean. And my dad left another one of his upgrades for me to find."

Zero finally looked to his partner and blinked, sighting the red and white boots. "Really? You went shoe shopping at a time like this?"

"Shut up, Zero." X retorted. "How did the search and rescue go?"

Zero motioned ahead. "That bus contains all the survivors in this region. The GDC is set for escort duty. But I bumped into a pretty tough nut of a Maverick named Bit."

"Bit?" X thought for a moment. "I don't think there's anything in our files about him."

"I guess Doppler's been busy. Bit escaped, but you should be okay if he runs into you. I destroyed his shield."

"He had an energy shield?" X asked.

"No. A metal shield."

X rubbed at his eyes. "Of course. So what's next?"

Zero brought up his holographic map of Dopplertown. "You should have a look at the mining operation in District Beta. There may be survivors. As for me, I'm going to recon the warehouse district before I head back to base for repairs."

"So, we're back to you giving the orders again. And you? Repairs? Did this Bit character get the jump on you?"

"No, I overdid it. I can't overcharge for a saber throw anymore. Hazil's got to do a quick refit before I'll be at the top of my game."

"Heavens. You oughta give up this overcharge mechanic of yours and just focus on your swordsmanship alone, you know that?" X pointed out.

"Not this Uprising." Zero scoffed.

"You know, Zero, you could always give me your saber and take a break." X suggested innocently.

"You can have this saber when I'm dead. Er, again." Zero quickly retorted.

X waved off the remark. "It's yours. And you're not going to die on me, Zero. Not again."

"So, I don't die easy, and you won't let me." Zero Omega smirked. "I guess that's why we make such a good team."

"For as long as we're needed, Zero." X agreed quietly. "For as long as it takes."

* * *

_Master X's Quarters_

_Neo Arcadia Core_

_February 8th, 2210 C.E._

_8:24 P.M._

X was still for a moment, feeling the shadows of the past vanish back into the night. Once more, he found himself in the small and weary body of his current incarnation, sitting vigil as Ciel grew tired and sleepy. He squeezed the handle of the Z-Saber one last time, and then tucked it back away under his blue robe. "Our first mission was the easiest. After that, it only got harder, and there were times we fought tooth and nail. Zero never gave up. It was his unwavering strength that gave me the courage to press on…and it was he who saved me from Sigma at the last."

Weary, but enraptured by the story, Ciel looked at X hungry for more. "What happened to Zero?"

X closed his eyes. "I told you that Zero had died before. I lost him a second time, but it was all right. He deserved a rest."

"He's not dead?"

"No." X exhaled. "He's sleeping. He's been sleeping for a long time, because he was tired. The last thing he said to me was that if I needed him…he would come. And Zero always kept his promises."

"Do you need him now?"

"No." X smiled sadly. "No, not right now."

Ciel snuggled deeper into the blankets and yawned again. "X, if I needed him, would he wake up?"

"If you absolutely needed him, Ciel, yes." X leaned down and kissed the young girl's forehead. "If you could find him, if you were in danger, he would save you. I'm sure of it."

Ciel smiled with a child's innocent happiness. "Good." She closed her eyes and turned over. "Night, X."

"Good night, Ciel. Sweet dreams." X got up and left the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

He went into the living room and was about to sit down when his communicator chimed. He pulled it out of his pocket and thumbed it on; it was on a Guardian frequency. Fairy Leviathan was calling. "Yes, Levy?"

_"You busy?"_

"Not anymore."

His front door slid open with a quiet hiss of hydraulics, and Leviathan stepped into X's quarters with an impish smile. "Good." She said, tapping the communicator on her helmet off.

X sighed and stowed his own comm unit. "I wish you'd stop hacking my security passcodes, Leviathan."

"Oh, come on. Can't a girl have a little fun?" She pouted, flopping down on the couch opposite of X's large comfy chair.

"Sure, as long as it doesn't involve a felony." X sat down with more care than his subordinate and breathed out. "Any word from Harpuia yet?"

"No. But it's still early." Leviathan reminded him. "What will you do if we ever do find the Dark Elf?"

"You leave that to me." X said, looking past her to the wall. The strange, resigned lilt in his voice unsettled her slightly, but she didn't force it.

"So, how's Ciel?"

"Asleep, finally." X folded his hands together. "She's quite a bundle of energy. Talented, too. I think when she gets older, she'll really be something special."

"What story did you tell her tonight? Sleeping beauty?"

Stunned at the remarkable guess, and unwilling to part with the truth, X settled for a halfhearted chuckle. "Something like that. She liked it. You know, she said that she thinks of me as her father?"

Leviathan pointed an accusing finger at him. "Considering the hand you had in her birth, that's not far off. Why is it you became so obsessed with breeding superior humans?"

"My own father was obsessed with creating superior robots for the good of humanity." X reminded her. "I suppose…I'm just taking a page from his book, in my waning years. I'm tired of fighting, Fairy." The weariness in his eyes strengthened that statement. "I won't be around forever, as much as everyone would like to hope so. When I do go, it will just be you Guardians and her. Promise me you'll look after Ciel for me."

Leviathan pursed her lips, and X looked up pleadingly. "Please. Promise me." He repeated.

She sighed and caved in, nodding. "All right. I will. Have you asked the others that as well?"

"Just Harpuia. But I have a feeling you'll do a better job of it than he will."

"Oh, arguably." She said in a stuffy tone, putting a hand to her chest and lifting her head up. "That wind-blown fuddy duddy is just too serious most days."

"Because he has to be." X laughed at her comical posture. The humor didn't last long, though. She lowered her hand down and stared sympathetically at the founder of Neo Arcadia.

"Why did you give Ciel that particular appearance when you were programming her genetic markers, X?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do." Leviathan saw through his bluff. "Why?"

"Does it matter?" X asked tonelessly. Leviathan almost said yes, but she thought better of it. She knew the answer, just from what he had said already. X was tired, and there was no one left from his old life as a Maverick Hunter.

Ciel was the daughter he'd never had…a reminder of the love he had lost. And forcing him to admit it might well break him.

Leviathan stood up and gave her head a shake. "Never mind. Good night, Master X. We'll take care of things."

"You always do." X agreed quietly. Leviathan strolled past him, and let her hand rest on his shoulder for a moment before she faded away, as quietly as she'd come. The front door closed and locked behind her, leaving Mega Man X alone with his memories and his shadows.

He went into stasis, enduring another dreamless sleep. And in the bedroom, the little girl he cared for, the princess of Neo Arcadia, dreamed of her knight in shining red armor.


	8. 2013: Bears and Jackals

_**MEGA MAN X: THE REPLOID INDEPENDENCE DAY FILES**_

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

**2013: Bears and Jackals**

* * *

_New Tokyo, Japan_

_June 2__nd__, 2121 C.E._

_5:45 P.M._

If there was anything positive about being a Maverick Hunter, it was that you were never in danger of losing your job. Losing your life, sure, but not your livelihood. There would always be some reploid, somewhere, doing _something_ that qualified as a dangerous, and therefore, Maverick act. There were times that X really got worn down by that label. Sometimes, the Azure Hunter would wonder aloud to Dr. Cain and his best friend Zero Omega if they were really doing the right thing. More than one reploid who'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and who had a bad day had ended up being either reprogrammed or retired, sometimes for offenses that a human would only get a two day suspension and some counseling for.

But then there were the Mavericks who well and truly deserved the label. The ones who performed acts so heinous, so barbaric, that there was no moral quandary at all, only the urge to hunt them down and grind their control chips into so much dust. Today at noon, in one of the busiest sections of downtown New Tokyo, one of those Mavericks had struck, and struck hard.

His name was Vulius, or at least that's what he called himself now. Vulius had been activated in 2119 as Widget, a reploid to serve in the JDF test facilities, an intelligence type who had been made into a weapons technician and engineer. He'd excelled in his field, until he snapped a year ago and set off a massive explosion that had leveled the underground bunker his department had been located in in Kyushu. The original assessment had been that Vulius had been killed in the blast as well, but he had emerged in August of 2120 with a sworn vendetta against Japan, claiming in his own misanthropic manifesto that he was returning the favor for past wrongs. Since then, he'd been a constant thorn in the side of the MHHQ. He preferred to keep to small scale events, and he'd actually won some support from other Maverick agitators. They flocked to Vulius not for his charisma, of which there was little, but for his genius. It was rare that anyone could outfox the Maverick Hunters, and Vulius had made a continual habit of it. His ability to continually craft new gadgets and devices kept him one step ahead of his pursuers.

Mega Man X finished his review of the file on Vulius and dismissed it from the corner of his left eye with a frown. He glanced down from his rooftop perch into the crater that had once been Jurama Park, a peaceful garden with pavilions used by workers in the business district as a place to eat their lunches. Now all that was left were the shadows of who had been there, and cracked imperfect glass from the primary blast zone. Somehow, Vulius had cobbled together the equipment to create a medium yield plasmic explosive device. How was something the local and national police were still trying to figure out. It was too late for this attack, but maybe the information could prevent another tragedy like this.

His helmet chimed at him, signaling that there was an incoming transmission. X raised a hand up and punched his receiver. "X here."

_"Hey, X." _It was Zero, and the Crimson Hunter sounded as glum as X felt. _"Dr. Cain's got a lead, he thinks. Are you about done over there?"_

"Yeah. There's nothing I can make out at the scene that the police haven't already. Let him know I'm on the way." X waited a heartbeat, and then added in an angrier voice, "We've got to get this bastard, Zero."

_"We'll get him, X. Believe it."_ The call ended, and X activated his warp generator.

What the hell, he thought as the world went white and he shot off in a beam of warplight for the MHHQ.

If you had to believe in something, believing that the real malingering assholes got their due in the end wasn't a damn bad thought.

* * *

_MHHQ_

_Dr. Cain's Office_

The doors hissed apart, and Mega Man X walked into the blue-lit office of Dr. James T. Cain, leader of the MHHQ. The old curmudgeon was digging into a bowl of spinach artichoke dip with a tortilla chip, and Zero was relaxed in the room's sole comfy chair.

"Zero. Doc." X greeted them both with a nod. "Getting a start on dinner, Dr. Cain?"

"This is lunch. Haven't thought about dinner yet." Cain grumbled. He popped the chip into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully, gesturing for X to take a seat in the less welcoming foldout seat. When he'd swallowed, Cain continued. "Vulius doesn't leave trails for us to follow, but he got sloppy this time. CCTV cameras in Hokkaido caught him leaving for the Kuril Islands by hoverferry this morning. He got the bomb ready and beat it out of there."

"That's not a problem." Zero said, waving a hand over his head. "Hell, the Kuril Islands are a short teleport away. I'm just glad he doesn't have a warp generator. It makes tracking him easier."

"Ideally, yes. But this is where things get crazy." Cain touched a button on his desk's keypad, and a holoprojector dropped down from the ceiling and blazed to life. It displayed a spherical display of the spinning earth, and zoomed in on the Sea of Okhotsk to the north of Japan. The Kuril Islands were highlighted. "It seems once he got there, he hijacked a hydrofoil pleasure craft from the Kakena docks, and headed northwest." The Kuril Islands went dark, and a larger landmass off the coast of Asia brightened up. "He went the one place that the Japanese authorities couldn't go: Sakhalin Island."

"That's Russian territory." X narrowed his eyes as he looked to the map. "Did well for itself during the second oil boom in the start of the 21st Century, but it's primarily agrarian now."

"Somebody's been reading too much again…" Zero teased his friend.

"And you don't read enough. Or file your own Unit mission reports." Cain reminded the Crimson Hunter.

"Hey, I've got people to do that stuff for me."

"Whatever." Cain sighed. "Long and short of it is, the Russians aren't exactly keen on foreign interference. And they're especially touchy about Sakhalin, because of historical precedent. That means even though we should be sending a full Unit to hunt this bastard down, I can't authorize it."

"So send me. I'll bring him back in eight pieces or less." Zero volunteered with a smirk.

"Zero, we're trying to prevent an international incident, not start one." Cain reprimanded him. The old doctor resecured the sash around his blue and red kimono and looked to the other Hunter in the room. "X, I hate to say it, but you're our best hope for bringing Vulius to justice."

"Sure. And all I have to do is trespass into territory where the Maverick Hunters have never been invited or given authorization to travel in, avoid getting shot up by the locals, and capture a Maverick who's forgotten more about weapons design than I ever studied." X rattled off the negatives of the case with his usual aplomb.

"That's the spirit, X." Cain chuckled. "Check in with Hazil before you go. He'll have a Sub-Tank ready for you."

X nodded and stood up. Zero caught his arm lightly, preventing him from walking away.

"If you need help…" Zero told X in a soft murmur.

X gave his friend an understanding nod. "I'll call you."

* * *

_Medical Bay_

_MHHQ_

"There's my favorite patient now!" Hazil, the Chief Medical Officer of the MHHQ shouted in greeting.

"I'm only your favorite because I almost never require major repairs." X said, strolling in.

"There's that, all right." Hazil, who was a reploid on a tank tread wheelbase, patted an exam table. "Hop on up and we'll do your pre-mission exam quick."

The Medical Bay was quiet, with only other nurses and technicians worrying over their equipment and supplies, but X knew it was merely the calm before the storm. Ever since the Second Uprising, irregular reploids everywhere had flocked to the banner that Sigma had raised. Though X never spoke of it, he knew that there were some who wondered how Sigma had survived to attack Cornus Island. Or if he'd actually died, and it all hadn't been some cruel trick played by the Maverick factions. Now, June 4th was a twisted rallying cry for Mavericks around the world. In two more days, it would be the third anniversary of the day the world had changed forever.

"You and I both have more important things to do besides a checkup." X brushed Hazil's scanning wand aside, in no mood for further distractions. "Do you have a Sub-Tank for me?"

"As ordered." Hazil sighed. The doctor opened his overlarge chest compartment and removed the dual-cylindered device. X accepted it, opened his own chest armor, and slid it home with a definitive click. "You don't often need one of these." Hazil pointed out. "How serious is this mission?"

"I'm going after a Maverick in a region we're not exactly welcome in." X said. "It's serious enough…and I need to see The Vault."

The medical technicians in the room went still at the request, and even Hazil sucked in air between his teeth. "Damn." The gray-haired reploid gave a sharp look to the others in the room, who quickly got back to their own business. "All right. You remember your passcode?"

"Do you?" X countered grimly. Hazil let the remark slide and motored his way to a closet that had been rebuilt in January of 2119. X stepped in after him, and they stopped at the back wall of the room that smelled of antiseptic and gauze. A small and innocuous thermostat was placed there, and with some hesitation, Hazil dialed out a combination on the old-fashioned rotary gauge: 5-33-16.

The wall paneling above the thermostat recessed, then slid upwards to reveal a display pad, speaker, and microphone.

"Access Vault: Command code Hazil-Lambda-Four-Tau." Hazil intoned. The device chimed in approval, then waited for a second input.

X spoke next. "Access Vault: Command code Xavier-Eight-Phi-One."

The device glowed full green, and the wall parted and slid open to reveal the hidden Vault behind it. Two gleaming sets of armor were displayed in transparisteel tubes: The first, white and blue with gold trim, and the second a more vicious and angled setup with red mixed in to the palette. To X's surprise, there was an empty tube set up between the two armor sets.

"Why the third display case?"

"Insurance." Hazil said. "Although I'd love for you and the world to prove me wrong, I expect you'll be needing it." The armors, of course, were just mock-ups: The real armor was kept suspended in dataform, hard-coded only to function with X's armor recall systems. "So, how big are you making your dick for this trip?"

"Language." X chastised his doctor. "But the Paladin Armor should suffice." He stepped up to the first display and morphed his right hand into an X-Buster. He jammed the end of it into the I/O dataport at the base, and within seconds, the Azure Hunter was clouded in blinding light. Hazil lifted one of his arms to shield against the glare, and nodded in satisfaction when X, now resplendent in his shining white armor, stepped back. "Better." X breathed out slowly.

"It might not be the Retribution Armor, but you could still punch a hole through a small mountain in that."

"Depending on where Vulius is hiding, I may need to." X walked out of The Vault, letting it seal up behind him. Doctor and patient stepped back onto the main floor of the Medical Bay, and Hazil gave X a comforting squeeze of the arm.

"You be careful out there."

"Hey, it's me." X reassured Hazil with a wink. "I'm always careful." He shot up and out of the building in a beam of warplight, and left the safety of the MHHQ behind him.

It was time.

* * *

_Southern Sakhalin Island_

_Pryvadna Docks_

_8:14 P.M. (6:14 P.M. New Tokyo Time)_

X took form on a cold-water beach covered in rocks. A quick scan of his surroundings revealed a harbor built for fishing trawlers, and the boat that Vulius had made his escape in. There were a few civilians clustered around it, and one police officer. They were all staring in X's direction. He hadn't expected to be very stealthy, though: Arriving via teleport was always a dead giveaway.

Biting the bullet, X approached the group and queried them about Vulius. After a great deal of back and forth, with X struggling to understand their heavily accented Russian, he determined that Vulius had arrived, roughed up the harbormaster's collections agent, and made off on a hijacked hovercycle. Vulius had last been seen traveling north, onwards to the center of the island, and the dismal environs therein. Absorbing the grim news, X excused himself from the others and started running north. The trek would give him some time to collect his thoughts. He hit his communicator and called back to base.

"He's here on Sakhalin, all right. He ran north, though I can't think of a good reason why." X said.

_"The Russian Federation did a lot of drilling for natural gas back in the 21__st__ Century on Sakhalin: Nobody ever got around to tearing down the old complexes after, and according to government files, a lot of the island's considered too hazardous for habitation because of it."_ Dr. Cain, ever the researcher, must have been preparing a dossier on the region since his meeting with X earlier in the evening. _"It could be he's hoping to hide out in the abandoned wreckage until things die down."_

"Maybe." X frowned. "He's deviating from his pattern. It's not often we can track him."

_"I suppose it's occurred to you that this might all be a trap?"_

X grinned. With the occasional blast from his dash thrusters, he'd cleared nearly ten kilometers from the small settlement of Pryvadna. "You're only now thinking of that possibility?"

_"It's not too late, X. We could dispatch Zero out as backup."_

"Save it. It's been quiet so far, and you need one of us on hand in case there's a flare-up before the fourth."

_"Well, to be honest, he's pacing like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, and he's starting to get on my nerves."_

"So do what I do."

_"What's that?"_

"Get him wasted."

_"As much as he drinks? You trying to bankrupt me, boy?" _The two shared a long laugh at that. _"So, you calling me with the top down?"_

"Nah, just out for a run. Needed to clear my head some." By now, X was cresting over a hill and dipping into a small valley with a creek that ran through it. "You take a break, Doc. You know how you get headaches when you stay up too late."

_"Been talking with Hazil behind my back again, eh?"_ The head of the MHHQ growled.

X's comeback was cut off when the ground five meters ahead of X exploded from an inbound mortar. He quickly managed a short hop and fired his dash thrusters ahead of him, halting his forward momentum to nil and backflipping to land in a crouch. His Buster was formed, and the air whined as he started to build a charge.

Then he heard the distinctive sound of a heavy round being chambered behind and to his left. He didn't look immediately, though; he had armored humanoid targets standing at ten, two, four, and…yes, five o'clock. And the one doing the _ka-chunk_ing at his seven.

He narrowed his eyes in the waning daylight, and focused on the two that stood ahead of him; one in red armor with shoulder-length black hair, and one in full arctic white, helmeted and visored. They both wielded Busters, and for the moment, kept them pointed at the ground. Reploids.

_"X? What's happening?"_ Dr. Cain asked nervously.

X slowly rose to his feet, giving the pack of five reploids no excuse to fire. "I'm going to have to call you back, Doc." He ended the call with an eyeblink, and looked to the red and white reploids. "All right, you have my attention." They didn't seem like Mavericks, at least not the variety he was used to going up against: Their armor was too pristine, too updated. They held themselves with postures that spoke of professional training. Military, most likely. X really hoped they weren't Mavericks after making that assessment.

The red-armored reploid pointed at X with a finger. "You are…Mega Man X." He said, in thickly accented English. "You are trespassing on Russian soil."

"And you're pointing guns at my head." X replied, finally glancing around him in a casual sweep. Sure enough, his seven o'clock was lugging a launcher. "Several."

"You were given warning shot." The red reploid growled.

"Good thing, too. If you'd fired to kill, we'd have had problems." By now, his Buster's whine was growing increasingly loud, and a purple glow was hovering around his right arm. "Are we going to have a problem?"

"Do you want problem?" The red reploid said, turning his head so the wind blew his hair behind him and not across his face.

"I'm here for a Maverick. That choice is yours." X said. He narrowed his eyelids. "You're not doing yourself any favors right now. And trust me, you'd regret it."

The white armored reploid turned and stared emotionlessly to the red one, and something unspoken passed between them. With a shake of his head, the red reploid dismissed his Buster and made a gesture. The others stood down as well.

"Good choice." X pointed his Buster straight up into the air and discharged the blast. A double helix of roiling violet plasma seared the air as it flew up for hundreds of feet before winking out of existence. The echo from the wasted shot rang in the small valley. X let his arm shift back to normal. "Now. Want to try this again? Who are you all supposed to be?"

"Russian military." The white reploid spoke up. His accent was just as thick, though a tad less harsh than the red one. X nodded, as they'd confirmed his suspicions. Special Forces, most likely. Spetsnaz? It wouldn't be terribly unreasonable. They kept units stationed along the Sino-Russian border, which wasn't all that far from Sakhalin. "Maverick Hunters are not authorized to operate here."

"I didn't have a choice." X explained. "My target fled Japanese territory and made for Sakhalin. His name is Vulius. He's responsible for the deaths of 50 people today alone, and many more in the past. He's dangerous."

"We will handle him." The red reploid said imperiously. "You will leave."

X stood his ground. "I didn't exactly make my arrival here a secret. You probably traced my warp signature the second I crossed the sea border. I'm going to retire this Maverick, and you're wasting my time. Even as we speak, he's going farther north."

The red reploid's mouth twitched momentarily, as though he meant to frown and suddenly thought better of it. "Not west?"

"I just talked to the police in Pryvadna. He went north."

Again, the red and white reploids looked to one another. That silent conference seemed to resolve an issue, and the red reploid nodded. The other three Special Forces troopers disappeared in beams of warplight, shooting off for places unknown.

"If you are to hunt this Maverick, we will provide assistance." The white reploid said.

"I don't need help." X pointed out.

"Call it escort, then." The red reploid said warningly.

Seeing that they were deadest on accompanying him, X shrugged in acceptance. He was glad that Cain had sent him and not Zero on this mission. Though he'd channeled a little of Zero's cockiness in the standoff, the ending of it was something only he could have done. Zero would have told these two to go choke on a capacitor, to the detriment of the mission.

"Well, if we're going to be partners on this mission, I'm going to need to know what to call you." X said, managing a small smile.

"Krazny." The red reploid said, after a moment's thought. The helmeted reploid in white grunted.

"Belyi."

X tried not to roll his eyes. They had just told him to call them Red and White.

* * *

_9:48 P.M._

Neither Belyi nor Krazny were much for discussion, an admirable quality in battle-bred soldiers, but a pitiable one for the person stuck with them. With Krazny leading and Belyi following them, X kept himself occupied by evaluating the two reploids.

Krazny, or Red, was six feet tall, with a stocky musculature. He wore no helmet that X could see, which was a little surprising, given how it exposed his control chip to direct assault with no protection. Aside from the Buster he carried hidden in his arm, Krazny also had a shield emitter embedded in his left wrist. X recognized it as the most updated GDC model; it could blunt a supershot with its reinforced plasma latticework and not collapse. His long black hair made X think of Zero, but where Zero kept his blond tresses confined in a hairband, Krazny let his own locks flow freely. Either Krazny simply didn't care about how his helmetless appearance and wild hair weakened him tactically, or he could annihilate foes in spite of them. Neither option was too appealing, given how wild his eyes and feral his voice was.

Belyi, on the other hand, was more subdued in appearance. He seemed quite the cool customer, and one who upheld protocol in everything. From his crisply buffed armor, to the approved helmet and visor, the white reploid carried himself as a model soldier. He was equal in height to Krazny, and aside from his Buster, Belyi seemed to carry only a few thermite grenades and a beam dagger sheathed on his hip. Neither Belyi nor Krazny seemed victim to overcompensation: they carried a limited number of weapons, and did not seem bothered by it. If it had come down to a fight with them earlier, they had been prepared to do so with only their minimal armaments. Unlike Krazny, X couldn't get a read off of Belyi on his demeanor. The man was a stone wall, and the color of his armor, which seemed crafted for arctic operations rather than the environment they were in now, gave him the appearance of an immovable glacier.

"So." X said, trying to start a conversation. "You're called Red, and he's White. Were those names given to you, or did you choose them because of the historical significance?"

Krazny looked over his shoulder and grunted questioningly. Belyi remained mute.

Not emboldened as much as he was tired of the silence, X went on. "During the first few decades of the Soviet government, they commissioned chess boards, and the pieces were political figures. Instead of black and white, the pieces were red and white, with red representing the Communist elite. Unfortunately, Stalin had a habit of executing people, and so their pieces had to be bleached white. It got hard to keep the sets straight, so most people gave up on it."

"Belyi is comrade, not enemy." Krazny declared grimly. "And I do not play chess."

"You more of a Russian Roulette kind of guy, then?" X asked. Krazny gave him a hard stare, and X changed the subject. "I admit, I was a little surprised how quickly you changed your tune. Are you worried that he's going cross-country instead of hopping to the mainland?"

"You talk much for famous Maverick Hunter." Belyi droned.

X shrugged. "Just making up for the silence you two bring."

Krazny grunted again, and they pulled up short of a rundown complex. It was a mess of rusted steel girders, cracked concrete, and half-collapsed shacks. According to what little remained of the sunfaded paint on the sign outside of it, it was Gazprom Mining Facility 12.

X clenched his hand into a fist. "They pulled out everything they wanted, and they left the mess behind."

Belyi shrugged. "So, we should prosecute ghosts?"

"You should focus." Krazny snapped. "Both of you." He pointed to an abandoned hovercycle, parked off of the roads alongside the intact fencing around the complex. "You miss things when you speak. He is here."

Belyi's visor flickered for a moment. "Engine is still warm. Trail on thermals show he entered facility."

_"Prekasneya."_ Krazny smirked. "So, you kill Maverick after all, Hunter X."

"Well, good." X nodded. "So, how do you want to do this? Multiple angles of approach? All together?" In response, Belyi and Krazny took off on foot, sneaking around the perimeter without relying on teleport or dash thrusters.

X gave his head a shake. "Divide and conquer, then." He muttered. X touched the fence with the back of his hand, using the electrosensors in his gloves. Not electrified. Good. A quick hop and pull got him on the other side of the fence, and then sticking to one piece of debris after another, he slowly made his way inside the complex. There was plenty of cover to be found: abandoned forklifts, steel piping that had never been used, and now sat as a rusted pyramid, and of course, the old buildings themselves. Wary of Vulius, X pulled up short of what must have been a worker's cafeteria and break area. Keeping his Buster primed, but not charging a shot to keep silent, he braced his back against the outer wall and peeked through a damaged window. Emptiness and silence greeted him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could make out the figures of Belyi and Krazny entering the facility by their own routes. Like X, they kept to cover. Unlike X, they did a better job of it; he lost track of them more than once. If Vulius was hiding here in Facility 12, they'd find him soon enough.

And then, suddenly, a place that had been long dead and abandoned came to life. The floodlamps about Facility 12 popped and came to life as the LEDs were forced to activate. Speakers stationed through the old complex crackled and hummed, and then X's blood curdled when a voice came through them.

_"Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly…"_

* * *

The voice laughed at the poetic reference, and X gnashed his teeth together. "Vulius." He muttered softly.

_"Ah, he remembers me! How __**marvelous**__." _Vulius said, going from cheerful to malevolent in a heartbeat. X flinched; Vulius must have had the entire complex wired for sound. And then something in the back of his head screamed alarm bells. If he had the place wired for sound…

With a shout, X dashed away from the worker's break building. His reaction was quick enough to spare him significant damage, but the blast wave caused by the shack's explosive destruction still sent him flying through the air, and skidding along the ground.

_"HA! Oh, you're so crackerjack, X. I really thought I had you that time. Been training with Zero again? The two big bad Maverick Hunters…But what's this?" _X picked himself up and muzzily tried to get his bearings back. _"Oh, you brought friends. They don't look like Maverick Hunters, though. The red one threw me for a bit, but Zero's not as ugly as he is. Ugh, black hair? He has the advantage of synthetic follicles, and he wastes it on that dreary color? We should really do something about that. I know! Let's burn it all off of him!"_

X realized that in spite of their best intentions, they'd fallen right into a trap of Vulius's making. Somehow, that bastard Maverick had turned this entire ruin into a deathtrap. He spun around and located Belyi and Krazny by the light of the fire in the wreckage of the exploded shack. "Get clear! He's got this whole place rigged to…!"

A chain of detonations finished X's sentence, and the ground underneath the two Russian reploids imploded. They let out a shout of dismay as their footing gave way, and they were sucked down. With a scream, X dashed to the edge of the revealed chasm and glanced down. To his relief, he saw that Belyi and Krazny had found a suitable handhold. Unfortunately, there was the glimmer of liquid beneath them, a toxic mixture of water, chemicals, and crude oil that would wreak havoc on their systems if they fell in.

Before X could call down to them, a high-intensity laserburst blasted clean through his right arm, reinforced armor and all. He screamed in pain and whirled about. When he tried to summon up his X-Buster, the mechanisms refused to engage; the wound had disabled the transformation matrix of his right arm.

A paralyzing blast of electroplasma followed up the shot, wrapping around X tightly and dropping him to his knees. Gritting through the pain, X rode out the spasms. He knew this trick well. Vile had used it more than once, and counteracting it would require some time.

The question was, would he have the time to do so?

Out of the shadows and into the firelight of the burning wreckage, a lightly armored figure bearing a carried laser cannon marched, flanked by two Maverick cronies at his sides. Vulius, one of the most devious Mavericks to plague Japan, was unassuming. He stood at 1.6 meters, or five and a half feet tall, and his musculature was sorely underdeveloped. Vulius wore light gray armor made for show and not function, although he had since added to it with modifications of his own design, and X suspected that as in past appearances, his "thin" armor was significantly improved against plasma and ballistic impacts. A tough shell around a frail nut, Vulius's major advantage was his intelligence. He was an insane genius, really. More than one commentator had remarked he fashioned himself after the fictional Moriarty. The orange crystal dissipation cover on his helmet flickered, showing a moment of activity in his processors beyond the norm.

"Oh, don't get up, X." Vulius snorted, looking to the brutish Maverick on his left. X saw that the reploid carried an electropulse generator, embedded in his palm. He'd never seen that design before. "Crackler does fine work, and you don't want to go ruining your poor microservos trying to fight through the counteractive impulses. What do you think? It's not bad for borrowed hardware. I could improve the design in a few days, I'm sure." Vulius handed off his weapon to the Maverick on the left and preened as he congratulated himself.

"You're a real piece of work, Vulius." X rasped.

"You know, you're the fourteenth person to say that to me?" Vulius cracked a toothy grin. "I must say, X, I am impressed. I didn't that any of the Hunters would have the balls to come after me here in Russian territory. It seems you're made of sterner stuff after all."

"I killed Sigma, Vulius. Compared to him, retiring you is going to be like breaking a toothpick." X stared daggers at the Maverick.

Vulius smiled and leaned down to look at X face to face. "And how exactly are you going to go breaking toothpicks when you can't even move your arms?"

X twitched again. His armor was working as fast as it could, trying to erect an absorption field using his warp generator. It was having trouble identifying the correct amplitude. Vulius snorted and stood back up.

"Well. As much as I love having intelligent conversations, it seems I've caught you in one of your dumb moments. Pity. Oh, before I forget…" Vulius lifted a hand up and whistled, and from the darkness of the night skies came two small reploid-sized aircraft. They froze into a hover above Vulius, and the Maverick pointed to one of the derricks that had once been used to pump water and chemical sludge into the ground. The two drones flew towards it and unloaded their weapons, tiny micromissiles that exploded on impact with powerful plasmic shockwaves. The metal of the old structure creaked and groaned, and then fell towards, and down into, the pit that Belyi and Krazny had fallen into. X heard them both scream, and then the horrible shriek of splintering metal and a heavy splash silenced everything.

"Such wonderful toys these Russians have." Vulius grinned.

"You killed them." X whispered.

Vulius harrumphed. "Can't have them spoiling the fun now, can we?"

"You kill dozens of people in an explosion, and you think of FUN?" X screamed out. Vulius blinked at the Maverick Hunter's rage, and chuckled.

"Well, it seemed a better hobby than raking sand in a rock garden." Vulius clapped his empty hands together. "And now, X, I have places to be, things to shop for, an entire city to plan on destroying…Hate to say it, but I'm swamped. Luckily, my two friends here are more than happy to keep you entertained." He laughed aloud. "You know what the funniest thing is, X? That explosion that has you so riled up? That was just a misfire. Consider it a preview of the fireworks I'm bringing to New Tokyo!" Laughing even more, Vulius walked past X and retrieved his hovercycle. The scream of the engine blended with his manic voice, and the Maverick disappeared to the north.

That left only the two Mavericks Vulius had brought as insurance to deal with. Hefting his laser cannon, the second looked at X with narrowed eyes.

"And you're supposed to be the best?"

"So they say." X panted. The electropulse was really tiring him out. The only good thing about it was that his warp generator was finally zeroing in on the correct amplitude required to neutralize it and recharge his operations energy.

The grunt lifted the cannon up and started to build a charge. "Then I guess that this would make me the best."

"No. It doesn't."

**Amplitude Identified. Dissipating paralytic field.**

X smiled, and felt the electroplasma sparking off of him begin to wane. Just in time. He swerved his head down and ducked the shot before the Maverick had pulled the trigger, then dashed at him headfirst. Against the heavily reinforced armor of X's helmet, designed to buckle ceilings, the Maverick's armor didn't stand a chance. X nearly severed the fool in half when he collided with the brute's midsection. He pulled his helmet out of the reploid's bleeding gut and pushed off of him.

The Maverick Vulius had called Crackler screamed in panic and fired off another blast from his palm-mounted electropulse generator. This time, X saw it coming, and easily jumped over the slow-moving energy netting. The nanobots in his bloodstream used the energy from the converted shock and repaired the damage in his arm, and X was able to manifest his Buster again. A trio of shots stitched up Crackler's body, and X closed the gap. He grabbed hold of the damaged Maverick's arm, twisted it around, and shoved the palm-mounted electropulse generator into his chest. Crackler screamed in pain, and the proximity of the device overloaded his systems. X backdashed away from him just in time to escape the detonation of the Maverick's microfusion generator.

X quickly made for the chasm, and the wreckage of the derrick that had collapsed into it. "Belyi! Krazny! Say something!" He paused at the edge and looked down, and to his relief, saw that the two Russian reploids were slowly making their way up, using the girders as their pathway of escape.

"You need not worry." Belyi assured him, as they stepped onto solid ground again.

"We are very hard to kill." Krazny added. "And so is your Maverick."

"I knew Vulius was dangerous." X gave his head a shake, and then turned on the two with a glower. "But I get the feeling you two haven't told me everything. Vulius didn't make that hardware. A palm electropulse generator? Controllable drones with plasmic missiles? You know what he said? _Such wonderful toys these Russians have_. So spill it."

_"Niechevo."_ Belyi swore. The helmeted reploid looked to his peer. "He didn't."

"Shut up, Belyi." Krazny said warningly.

X raised his Buster towards them. "The asshole I'm after nearly killed all of us just now, and he did it using tech that wasn't his. Stolen. Tech. So start giving me answers, _right now_."

"Or else what?" Krazny snorted, taking a step towards X.

The first shot flew over his shoulder and incinerated three inches of the red reploid's hair.

"Son, Vulius is going to kill a lot more people in two days if I don't stop him." X's eyes were hard. "Don't. Push me."

Krazny seemed to measure the odds for and against open combat, and with a grimace, decided against tempting X. "There is hidden supply base on Sakhalin, farther north."

"You keep your newest toys in hidden supply bases?" X demanded.

"Spetsnaz ones, yes." Belyi added. Krazny gave him a withering glare, but Belyi went on. "The weapons you described…_Elektricheskoy Seti_ and _Zheleznyy Yastreb_ are two prototype systems stored at _Ostrov Khranilische_. If the Maverick used them, then base is compromised."

Krazny was seething as Belyi went on, and X filled in the gaps. "Let me guess. Nobody was supposed to know that the Russian Special Forces were keeping a hidden playground full of next-generation death machines strategically close to the Japanese mainland." The silence he got in response was as damning an affirmative as anything. X shook his head. "Terrific. International relations aside, we have a Maverick who knows where your base is, and has already taken things from it. Now tell me the coordinates so we can warp there before things get any hairier than they already are."

"Impossible." Krazny swept back what was left of his hair. "Is teleport barrier over entire northern region of island."

X felt his eyebrow twitch. "And you didn't think to mention this before?" The two Russians, of course, did not respond. "Perfect. I don't suppose you have a transport around here we can use?"

_"Nyet."_ Belyi said. "Base is 260 kilometers away. There is town 10 kilometers east we could find vehicle in."

"The only good news of the night." X brought up his systems and disengaged the safeties on his dash thrusters. The Maverick Hunter clicked his heels together. "Try to keep up, then."

He took off like a shot, the boosters on his feet firing a steady and unceasing burst series of thrusts. After a moment, Belyi and Krazny followed.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

_Northern Sakhalin Island_

_Ostrov Khranilische (Island Vault)_

_June 3__rd__, 2121 C.E._

_2:27 A.M._

The means of transport available to them were limited to what they could scavenge. X had thought of calling in a Landchaser, but circumstances had nixed that decision. And so he found himself bouncing in the flatbed of an old pickup truck whose tires should have been replaced 3,000 miles ago, while Belyi drove and Krazny rode shotgun.

The noise caused by their rapid transit (At least, rapid for the workhorse they were in) prevented them from talking in anything softer than a yell. X pounded his fist on the roof of the truck's cab, getting the attention of the Russians. Krazny looked back over his shoulder and slid the tiny cargo window open.

_"DA?"_

"How much longer?" X hollered.

"Who says you are stronger?!" Krazny demanded.

"No, damnit! HOW! MUCH! LONGER!"

"Ah!" Krazny gave it a moment's thought. "Is sub-entrance four kilometers from us! We use, perhaps catch Vulius by surprise!"

"That's doubtful…" X said to himself.

"What?"

"NOTHING!" X snapped. It was clear that they wouldn't get anything said.

Seven minutes later, they stopped in the middle of an open field, and the engine went mercifully silent. The Russians hopped out and started searching around. X did the same, remaining puzzled at their approach. Finally, Belyi let out a noise of satisfaction and kicked over a rock. "Is here."

Krazny reached down and tore away a large carpet of sod, which revealed a hatch with a recessed handle.

"A top secret, internationally prohibited staging facility for the Spetsnaz, and your security is a hidden door?" X asked.

"No. Security is bomb if door is opened wrong." Belyi chuckled. "Also sets off alarm with explosion."

"Is good thing that we know code." Krazny said. He looked at X. "Lucky you are with us."

"Yeah, that's all well and good, boys, but I'm a little concerned that neither of you have asked how Vulius KNEW about this facility in the first place, because that's been keeping me worried on the drive." X reminded them.

"We know how." Krazny said, seeming grimmer than usual. "Operative went missing in Kamchatka, but did not know why."

"Until you…how you say, connect dots." Belyi finished. "Davich is traitor. You have your Maverick. We take care of own problem."

* * *

A few minutes later, as they were maneuvering through corridors that looked like a remnant of World War III, X bothered to ask the question he should have thought of before they ever set foot into the base: If one of the Russian's own had gone rogue, how did they know that they weren't walking into another trap right now? Or that this base wasn't also wired to prevent snoopers?

"No wireless transmissions." Belyi reassured him, tapping his helmet. "Of course, that does not mean we are not expected."

"You're both such balls of sunshine. Are you expecting to die?"

"We have saying, Hunter X." Krazny chuckled. _"Bud'te blagodarny reka ne zamerzayet…_Be grateful river is not frozen."

"Is that your way of saying things could be worse?" X complained. He gave his head a shake. "You mentioned teleporting doesn't work here. How would Vulius and your Davich get the weapons and supplies out of here?"

"By hovertruck." Belyi said. "Same way supplies arrived. We are heading to garage now."

"Has he moved anything out yet?" X demanded. "Anything he gets is going to be used against the people of New Tokyo."

"Negative." Belyi grunted. "Outer security cameras of base show no movement."

The two Russians seemed to be in control, and that unsettled X. They would love nothing better than to put this problem to bed and then pretend as though nothing happened. It was clear that their government would consider this too much of an embarrassment. Would they come after him once this was done to keep the secret?

"Belyi, secure the armory." Krazny ordered suddenly. The white helmeted reploid slowed and broke off, heading down a separate hallway. X looked questioningly to Krazny, and the red reploid brushed back his black hair. "They may not have gotten everything. He will secure remaining materials."

"And alert the entire base that we're here."

Krazny chuckled a bit. "Belyi works quiet. You and I have different approach, yes?"

X let Krazny take the lead; the Russian knew how to reach the hangar. "So, you're a noisy fighter as well?"

Krazny chuckled again, offering no return remark. They turned down another corridor, and neared a shutter. Before they got close to it, however, the doors opened of their own accord.

A reploid driving a forktruck paused behind the gate, sighting Krazny and X.

"One of yours?" X asked Krazny casually.

Krazny lifted up his Buster at the vehicle. "No."

"Intruders!" The Maverick screamed out, rushing them. He raised the tines of his lift, attempting to gore them. Krazny and X unloaded with a rapid barrage of plasmafire, melting the front end of the lift to slag.

"Aim for the tires!" X shouted, directing his shots downwards. When Krazny's shots matched his own, the unarmored vehicle gave out. Unbalanced, it lurched forward and then collapsed on its side a scant two meters from the two reploids. X marched up to the woozy Maverick and blasted his head off his shoulders, ending the threat. "It's too crowded in here for forklifts, scum."

Through the still open shutters that led to the vehicle bay, they heard loud and agitated voices growing in number.

"They know we're coming." X said, starting to charge a shot.

Krazny smiled his insane little grin and did the same. "Good."

* * *

With the element of surprise lost, X and Krazny found themselves in a contest of brutality. As soon as they charged into the bay, a hail of gunfire came at them. Plasma rounds, high-impact shells, explosives and stranger weapons besides were all thrown in their direction. They dashed apart and ducked for cover behind support beams, narrowly avoiding the storm that incinerated the entryway.

"God, were you planning for World War IV when you stocked this bunker?!" X shouted to Krazny over the noise.

Krazny pointedly ignored the question and waited for a lull, then swung around and unloaded a level 3 supershot at the nearest cluster of Mavericks. X, who had stored up his double helix wave overcharge, swung around and took aim at a lightly-armored tank that had been responsible for the shelling. The purple shots tore clean through the outer plating and gutted its nose, exploding the tank's entire magazine and turning it into a burning, blasted out wreck.

As the Mavericks scattered to avoid the shrapnel of the ruined war vehicle, X got his first good look at the room. An entire fleet of hovertrucks was making ready to move out. Wide shutters that led to the outside had just finished rising to the open position, and every vehicle was loaded and manned with equipment and defenders. What worried X the most were the gunners on the transports; one at the rear and another at the middle. With twelve trucks, that made for twenty-four turrets capable of firing plasmaburst rounds at anything unfortunate to come after them…And to his dismay, the center turret on each transport was armed again with missile launchers, and their own radomes.

"Damnit, what the hell were you thinking?!"

"Those missile launchers are not ours!" Krazny yelled over to X, laying down an arc of covering fire as the Hunter swept in closer. A particularly insane Maverick rushed Krazny with a blue beam saber, screaming his fool head off. Krazny easily ducked the blow, pinched the reploid's wrist in his fist, and snapped his arm off by kicking the rest of his body away from him. Now brandishing the man's own saber, the red Spetsnaz quickly gutted the Maverick and moved on. "It is add-on!"

A pair of dark black visored reploids opened up with their arm cannons at X, and the Hunter winced under the lashing before he dashed clear and put them both down with a single eagle-eyed level 2 green sizzler.

The trucks roared to life, and they began to roll out of the facility one after another. Their gunners opened up, trashing the entire loading bay. As Krazny and X scrambled for cover, the gunners ruthlessly annihilated their own men, not caring who got caught in the crossfire.

"They're getting away!" X shouted, glad that his auditory receptors were able to filter out the bulk of the noise. A human's eardrums would have ruptured from the noise echoing around in the concrete bunker.

One vehicle, a lightly armored scouting transport, lingered behind as the last of the trucks made good on their escape. A gray and green reploid, more menacing than any of the other Mavericks that had been in the room, poked up through the roof and brandished a large bazooka over his shoulder.

"Davich!" Krazny roared at the Maverick. In response, the helmeted Davich merely sneered at Krazny and fired. Krazny threw himself to the side, but still got caught in the blast and thrown ten meters away.

"You lose, dog of humanity!" Davich shouted out, and his vehicle tore out of the exit. Lost to bloodrage, Krazny followed him out, and X dashed out a half second later.

They chased the reconnaissance vehicle down a short underground tunnel, with the darkness of the night creeping in from the outer doors. Both X and Krazny kept up a steady stream of fire at Davich and his transport, but the Maverick driver inside was skilled, and he weaved wildly, sparing the vehicle all but glancing blows. For his part, Davich kept firing rocket after rocket at them, and though he couldn't hit the nimble warriors directly, his barrage kept them from making too clean a shot.

They made it outside into the night air, and Davich lowered his bazooka, smiling oddly at the two. X was puzzled until the Russian Maverick raised up a radio transmitter. A detonator.

"NO!" Krazny shrieked. The plea did little good. Davich depressed the trigger, and behind them, _Ostrov Khranilische_, hidden beneath the earth of Sakhalin, exploded. The ground shook as the soil above the base ruptured upwards, and then cracks split apart to let out massive belching clouds of fire and smoke. What was left collapsed back in on itself, leaving a terrible, engulfing crater of dirt, concrete, and burning steel behind.

Thrown to the ground from the force of the blast, X struggled to pick himself back up. He looked at the ruins of the so-called Island Vault, and recalled with a sinking heart that Belyi had still been inside.

"You think you can stop us? That you can stop what is to come?!" Davich laughed triumphantly at the dumbstruck Krazny. "You are all fools who do not see the truth!"

Davich's boasting was cut short as a brilliantly blazing flicker of light burrowed through the early morning air and passed through Davich's torso. When it emerged out the back, armor, synthskin, and bits of precious vital systems exited from the wound also. Shortly after, shorter than it took to blink, the sharp cracking report of a rifle echoed clearly over the terrain. Davich reeled backwards and collapsed over the roof of the transport. The Maverick driver inside panicked and started to drive off, but a second vicious shot from an unknown source burst through the rear reinforced windshield and slammed through his neck, decapitating the driver. The transport skittered off a ways and then lurched to a halt.

X and Krazny turned towards the source of the rifle cracks, and there, stepping out of the shadows next to the edge of the collapsed pit, was Belyi, a strange rifle slung over his shoulder.

When the white reploid finally caught up to them, Krazny picked up his comrade and squeezed him in a tight bear hug. "You crazy fool!"

"Damn nice shooting." X complimented the Russian, also relieved that the soldier had survived.

"Sloppy." Belyi grunted through his visored helmet, clearly in no mood to accept the compliment. "Was aiming for heads." He motioned to the dead Mavericks and the idling vehicle. "Come. We see what Davich has to say for himself."

They found Davich lying in a pool of his own purple blood across the top of the vehicle, wheezing to hang on as his body slowly gave out on him. He weakly turned his head towards them and looked to Belyi with a grimacing smile.

"Forgot…you two always did go together." The green and gray reploid coughed up another glob of viscous circulatory fluid. "Should have taken all magnetic rifles. Mistake."

"Magnetic rifles?" X looked to the armament Belyi carried with sudden fear. Magweaponry was supposedly still in the experimental stage, according to official documents from various GDC nations. If Russia had cracked it, it was only a matter of time before every other nation was using them as well. The beginning of another arms race, and trouble that might even exceed another Maverick Uprising.

"Why, Davich?" Belyi asked slowly. "What made you do this?"

"We all…were being used." Davich grunted out. "That mission we were on…We were told to destroy our own. That they were liability. Is all we are, comrades. Liability. So long as corrupt nations control us, we will never be free."

"So you become Maverick? How will attacking New Tokyo do anything to help us?!" Krazny demanded angrily.

Davich laughed at that, and his head slumped back. He'd lost so much strength he couldn't even move now. "Vulius is visionary. When Russian weapons attack Japan, Japan will cry out for blood. Explosion in _Ostrov Khranilische_ used Japanese explosives. Explosives in Japan will be Russian caused. Taggants…confirm it. Already, report has been sent over Electrosphere. Tomorrow, entire world will know of this base. Of Russian aggression. Of Spetsnaz aggression. Both sides will scream for blood, and world will fall to war again. Only this time, out of ashes will climb reploids. Old nations will be washed away. New world…new world…New…"

Davich's eyes went dark, and the last flicker of power left in his body went out as his microfusion generator went into lockdown and killed the nuclear process.

X bowed his head. "Idiot."

"Russia would not fall for tricks!" Krazny scoffed.

"Really?" X looked pointedly behind them. "Your base just went up like a roman candle. If your friend Davich was speaking the truth, Vulius has had this planned from the get-go. What do you want to bet that he doesn't have a few other friends lined up in other places who are just waiting to do reactionary, unprovoked attacks in response to this mess? See, I know something about humans you all might not. You get them scared, you throw off their mental equilibrium, and they start doing really stupid things. If Vulius manages to attack New Tokyo using _your weapons_, he won't have to do much else to push the governments of the world into war." X's eyes burned. "They'll do it themselves, for their gods, for their nations, for the sake of fear itself. Your country put in a staging facility able to support an invasion force right off Japanese waters. If your bureaucrats were that stupid, how stupid do you think the rest of the world is?"

Krazny was visibly unsettled by the revelation. "So what do we do?"

X stared at the two Russians for a few moments longer, then walked around to the other side of the scout transport and opened up the door. He pulled out the body of the driver, then yanked Davich's corpse off of the roof.

"We stop a world war by cutting the fuse off the powderkeg. And Krazny, you're driving."

* * *

_Southern Sakhalin Island_

_10 kilometers from La Perouse Strait_

_June 3__rd__, 2121 C.E. _

_5:04 A.M._

The hovertrucks had built up a substantial lead on them in the time it had taken X, Belyi and Krazny to establish what the real purpose behind Vulius's presence on Russian soil had been. Krazny had gunned the military transport's engines to full throttle, but still, the narrow strip of water between Sakhalin and Hokkaido was in sight by the time that they caught up to the caravan. At least the time had given X time to call home and warn the MHHQ.

"Say again, Doc?!" X shouted.

_"I said, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces are scrambling aircraft to intercept those transports before they make landfall, but we can't find them yet."_

"Are you blind? They're right in front of us!"

_"X, we have you on the satellite feeds, but there's no sign of any trucks." _Dr. Cain explained. _"I've got Hunter assets mobilizing around the Hokkaido coast to protect the likely points of ingress any transports might take, alongside JSDF troops. The only good news is, the authorities located four other explosive devices around New Tokyo using the decay signature of the detonated one from yesterday, so Vulius won't have…"_

The line suddenly broke into static, and X winced. "Damn! Doc? Doctor Cain?" He adjusted his radio. "MHHQ, respond!" Nothing but noise answered him, and he angrily pounded the side of his helmet.

Belyi looked over to X. The two had their heads stuck out of the opening in the vehicle's roof, watching as Krazny got them closer and closer to the transports. "Problem?"

"My radio went dead. I'd bet a bag of doughnuts Vulius just set up radio jammers to mess with us. And what's worse, my boss just said that those trucks don't show up on radar."

If X could have seen Belyi's eyes behind his visor, he expected that they would have gone up at that. "He has masked the trucks from orbital view?"

"Yeah. Vulius is one goddamn smart cookie." X glared daggers at the nearest trucks. "I was hoping we could stop these bastards early, but it doesn't look like we're going to be that lucky."

"Comrades!" Krazny shouted from inside the transport. "We are running out of road soon. I will get us near the back vehicle."

"Perfect." X muttered. "So we'll be jumping from truck to truck, trying to stop them all. I love leapfrog."

"You have done this before?" Belyi asked.

"Trucks, no. But I did ride an ICBM and destroy it in the boost phase once." X deadpanned.

Belyi stared at him. "Did missile shoot back at you?"

X gave his head a shake. "No. But I guess we learn something new every day."

"Comrades!" Krazny hollered up again. "Get ready!" He revved the engine even higher, and their reconnaissance craft closed in on the rearmost truck. The rear gunner was clearly paying close attention, even in the darkness of early morning, and he opened up on them as they came near. Shots pelted the vehicle, and X and Belyi ducked down inside the vehicle for cover.

Amidst the sounds of plasmaburst rounds striking and melting the outer shell of their vehicle, X lifted his red and white Mark 18 X-Buster over his head. "I've had it up to here with these bastards!"

"Da." Belyi rumbled, brandishing his own Buster. The two leapt up simultaneously, quick-aimed, and fired a pair of supershots at the offending turret. The large blue spheroids of plasma passed by the steadier streams and struck true, blowing the rear turret of the vehicle apart. They hadn't moved fast enough to spare their own vehicle a serious pounding. Smoke filled the cabin as the engine redlined from the damage, and Krazny was forced to stick his head out the side window. He looked back up to the roof at his two accomplices.

"Get ready to jump!" Krazny yelled at them.

"Krazny, will you…" Belyi started worriedly.

"No time!" Krazny cut his partner off. The scouting vehicle was shaking wildly now, and the engine's screams indicated it was ready to blow. "Jump! Stop him! You know your duty, Belyi!"

Touched at Krazny's determination, X fought back the lump in his throat and managed to speak. "Krazny, it's been an honor fighting alongside you."

"The same to you, Mega Man X." The dark-haired reploid shouted back. His eyes hardened. "Stop him."

X and Belyi climbed to the rooftop of the vehicle, bracing themselves. They were now only fifteen meters away from the back of the hovertransport.

Twelve. Ten.

At eight meters, Belyi and X dash-jumped from their dying ride and crashed into the back of the truck. They dug their heels and armor wristclaws into the metal and whirled their heads around as a horrific shrieking noise rent the chaotic air.

Behind them, the engine of the reconnaissance vehicle exploded, and they lost sight of Krazny in the smoke. The vehicle spun out of control, veered sharply sideways, and then began to roll and tumble. By the time it stopped, X, Belyi, and the convoy were a half kilometer away.

"Krazny…" X whispered. The Hunter looked to Belyi. "I'm…"

The white reploid's jaw, the only visible part of his face, was set hard as stone. Belyi gave his head a shake and climbed up the back of the truck. "No time. We move." He was right, of course. X had to swallow back the pain of loss, however small it was for him, and move on. Belyi must have been crushed, but he had a mission to uphold.

As they climbed aboard the rearmost truck, there was a subtle vibration as the vehicles sped up, and the ground shifted beneath their feet. X looked over the side and blinked. No, the ground hadn't shifted. The ground had disappeared.

They were over water now, in the La Perouse Strait.

Only 40 kilometers separated them from Japanese soil.

* * *

The driver of the rearmost hovertruck in the convoy was on edge. The rear gunner had been firing like a madman, and then he had seen the truck pursuing them tumble away in a fireball of smoke and metal, obliterated. But no word had come forth from his two gunners that all was well. Not that they could use radios: Their leader, Vulius, had activated the radio jammers. That, in combination with their satellite screens, made them invisible to electronic eavesdropping and satellite overwatch. Still, couldn't they at least have sent one of them forward to tap on the top of the driver's cab and let him know that there were no problems?

He finished that thought just in time to hear a knocking coming from the roof. The driver smiled. Well, about time. The figure overhead moved to the side and reached a hand down, tapping lightly on the driver's side window before pulling his arm back.

The driver rolled down the window. "So, is everything good again?"

The hand snapped into the cabin through the open window and pulled him out before he could register what was happening. By the time he thought to blink, he was looking up at a starry sky, and a barely visible, slightly glowing white figure who loomed over him like an avenging angel. There was the flash of plasma and the hiss of a blade, and then the driver felt nothing…thought nothing.

Belyi pulled his beam dagger out of the Maverick's skull and let the corpse tumble out of the truck, splashing into the Strait. "Everything is good." He said, looking over his shoulder. The infrared vision of his visor allowed him to pick out Mega Man X clearly, and the Russian reploid gave a thumbs up and opened up the truck door, sliding inside.

X turned towards the next hovertransport in the convoy, just barely visible by starlight and the wake that its hoverthrusters kicked up in the water behind it. The truck he was standing on vibrated slightly as Belyi hit the engines and pulled them in closer.

"That's right. Get me a good angle." X encouraged Belyi, building up a charge. The locus of light around the collection ports of his X-Buster glowed blue, then yellow, and then a full six seconds later, a solid purple.

He raised his right arm up and braced it with his left, planting his feet solidly into the truck's cargo rooftop. Belyi pulled them in to the right and slightly behind of the next truck, and X took his shot. The intertwining double helix of overcharged plasma burned clean through the truck's storage cabin and set off whatever it was carrying. The truck exploded into flames and teetered away before crashing into the waves. With power lost, the repulsors gave out and the vehicle was condemned to the deep.

"The power to blow a hole through a mountain, or to gut a hovertransport!" X shouted out defiantly. The nearest four trucks perceived the danger, and reacted in a way that X hadn't expected. Instead of their own gunners taking aim, the cargo doors unfolded, and a storm of flying mechaniloids and jetpack-equipped Mavericks ejected out, focusing on Mega Man X and the truck.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me." X grimaced. That was all he managed before the "Iron Bird" attack drones homed in on him, firing phosphorus rounds and rockets. Amidst dodging bullets and blasting the more explosive projectiles, X saw several of the Maverick flyers heading for the front of the truck. He only hoped Belyi could take care of himself.

* * *

The white Russian could see the problem as clearly as X, but his own defensive options were far more limited with him being pinned behind the wheel. The closest of the flying Mavericks veered in, firing a scatterspray of low-powered plasma rounds. They peppered the front of the truck and burned holes through the windshield, leaving scorch marks far too close to his head for his liking. Belyi set his jaw, then punched out with his free right hand and knocked the windshield out, sending chips of safety glass everywhere. The wind and the smell of the surf howled at him, but it gave him more room to maneuver. He morphed his right hand into a Buster and fired back, clipping the first Maverick's arm. The fool fell away howling, spiraling out of control to crash into the sea.

There were plenty of others willing to take up the call, though. A full dozen rushed him all at once, and a few of them proved to be decent shots. His armor took the worst of the beating, but even then, plasma was a potent force. Belyi gripped the wheel harder and kept the truck on course, keeping up with the convoy, and fired back as much as he could.

One of the flyers came in from the side and jammed his Buster through the driver's side window. Belyi jerked his head back and narrowly avoided the point blank shot. Gritting his teeth, the Russian let go of the wheel and grabbed the Maverick by the arm, pulling his upper body into the truck. Grabbing hold of the reploid by the throat, he smashed the Maverick's head into the roof of the cab repeatedly. "That. Was. Not. NICE!" He snapped, punctuating the blows. The ceiling dented from the abuse, but the reploid's helmet gave out first, and the fool's skull was finally crushed, control chip and all. Letting off a disgusted snort, Belyi shoved the body back out of the hovertransport and grabbed the wheel again. "Stupid Mavericks." He muttered, taking aim and firing again. Realizing that the driver wasn't as helpless as they thought, the surviving jetpackers pulled back and focused their fire on the vehicle. Belyi swerved when he could, but the pursuit forced him to stay close to the rest of the convoy, and now the gunners on the other trucks were getting in on the action as well. To make matters worse, Belyi saw a few more Mavericks on the closest transports getting set up with magrifles for sharpshooting.

"X, you'd better hurry up there…" Belyi muttered.

* * *

There were just too many flying enemies and not enough time to shoot them all down. X also saw the gunners on the other hovertransports of the convoy taking aim at them, but he couldn't put them down until he cleared out the skies. In frustration, and having taken a few glancing blows which were still smoking from the abuse, X hurled an arc of wild plasma bullets upwards to keep his Maverick and mechaniloid attackers at bay. His eyes registered the central turret, which remained undamaged and untouched. It still had a full complement of missiles in it.

"Why not?" He gnashed his teeth and dashed for the mounted weapons system. Taking the controls in hand, he spun the launch turrets and gunbarrels skyward. Like a charm, the radar in the system locked on to the speedy mechaniloids. X smiled and pulled the trigger relentlessly.

A flurry of short-range missiles screamed up from the beleaguered hovertransport and caught the enemy by surprise. The Iron Bird drones had no defense against the sudden attack, and almost three-quarters of them were blown apart in the opening salvo. Wasting no time, X stitched the skies with plasmafire, and knocked out almost as many Mavericks. The surviving reploids scattered for safety, and the mechaniloids, relentless but predictable, were quickly dispatched.

"Oh, I like this gun." X checked for aerial targets one last time, then swung the crosshairs down and ahead towards the other nearby hovertransports. Their own turrets were firing on them, and somehow Belyi was managing to keep the damage to a minimum. X lined up his shots and plugged the last of his missiles into each of the four nearby transports' mounted turrets, shattering their attack. The surviving Mavericks clinging to the roof tried to bring their magnetic rifles to bear, but X seared the tops of the vehicles with the plasma blasters, eliminating them before they could put him in their scopes. That left the vehicles defenseless, and X kept firing until the barrels of his turret were glowing red hot, gouging massive holes into the hovertransports. One by one, the four nearest targets suffered critical damage and gave out, spinning out of control and crashing hard into the water. Six down including the one they were one, which left six more to deal with.

The skies were beginning to brighten; sunrise was coming soon, and the horizon revealed the remaining six hovertransports. It also revealed the not so distant Hokkaido Island, the beginning of Japanese soil. Though X couldn't yet see the shoreline, the mountainous island's ridges were looming shapes of darkness sitting on the water. They were running out of time.

Five of the hovertransports ahead of them picked up speed, but the lead truck lagged behind. Their own central turret locked on to X's position and fired, and he scrambled away from the unit before it exploded apart. Angrily, he charged up a supershot and fired back, knocking the gun and missile racks out of commission. A second supershot disabled the rear turret and eliminated the Maverick manning it.

He lined up his X-Buster and targeted the vehicle, charging for another devastating spiralshot. The seconds began to tick by, and the back hatch opened.

"More drones? More flyers? I don't think so." X growled. The charge hit purple, and he fired, gutting the truck. Before it collapsed, however, something leapt out of the back and hit the water, hovering on loud repulsor jets. A stunned X took in the sight; red and silver in coloration, it resembled a Ride Armor, but it was unlike any he'd ever seen. The thing bristled with weapons, and was a full meter and a half wider and one meter taller than others. It hovered over the water, skating backwards and keeping pace with X, Belyi, and their hovertransport easily. Most worrisome of all was that the cockpit was fully armored by reinforced transparisteel…and driving the strange Ride Armor was Vulius himself.

The enigmatic Maverick gripped the controls of his death machine and glowered at the Maverick Hunter. He spoke, and his voice boomed out of speakers from the Armor's neck. _"I was planning on saving this surprise for when we made landfall, but it seems you're in a hurry to die. You're not going to stop me now, X."_

"I'm not?" X retorted, firing a spray of plasma bullets at him. The Ride Armor lifted its left forearm up in front of it, and a powerful disc-shaped field of plasma ignited in front of it, absorbing the attack without complaint. X couldn't help but gape in surprise. "What in the…"

_"The Russians have been busy. I have to congratulate them on this little beauty. It's a prototype they've been working on, a weapon of force suppression for land and sea. How wonderful it will be to attack New Tokyo driving their newest weapon." _Vulius grinned at X. _"How wonderful it will be to kill you while piloting their precious __**Polyy Rytsar.**__"_

Translated, X realized, it meant Hollow Knight. A massive lance of plasma erupted from the wrist of the Ride Armor's right hand, and Vulius charged. _"Farewell, Maverick Hunter X!"_

X screamed and fired wildly at the mobile tank, all to no effect. Vulius closed the gap on their transport and slashed clean through it from nose to tail in one frenzied pass. The dissection and the subsequent explosions sent X flying into the air, and then tumbling towards the water, screaming.

* * *

And then, salvation. A blur of red metal flashed over the water, and X felt the jarring impact of a strong, viselike grip grab him around the waist before he hit the surf. He looked up at his rescuer, blinking as the grinning Zero Omega, Commander of Special Unit 0, looked back at him.

"I thought I told you to call me, X." Zero chided him. He was driving a Landchaser, but X was amazed that it functioned over water. No Cheval model they kept at the MHHQ had that much repulsorthrust.

"What the hell kept you?" X snapped back. Zero eased him back to the smaller rider's seat in back and spun the Landchaser in a tight arc around the burning wreckage of the severed hovertransport. "And what the hell are you driving?"

"Oh, you like it, huh? Newest thing from Cain Labs, the Adion model Landchaser. Goes over water, for a change. Doc Cain thought we might need it, and once we lost contact with you, me and the boys headed out to meet you and this convoy halfway."

X looked around worriedly. "Where's Belyi? He was driving that truck!"

"Oh, the white Russian?" Zero looked back to another Adion Landchaser being piloted by a Hunter of his unit, and pointed. Belyi was riding back behind him. "Looks like we fished him out too." Relieved, X took a look around. Fully nine Adion Landchasers were coasting through the surf, all of them looking primed and ready.

_"Blast you Maverick Hunters, don't you ever DIE when you're supposed to?!"_ Vulius raged. X and Zero turned towards the hulking Ride Armor and its brandished sword and shield of plasma.

"Damn. That thing looks like a tough nut to crack." Zero complained. "Got a plan here, X?"

"If I can hit him with my overcharged spiralshot, the blast should be enough to overload that energy shield of his." X thought aloud. "Hell, I've been one-shotting transports with it so far. Think you can get us close enough for me to hit him?"

"Sure, but the trick's going to be keeping him from hitting us!" Zero whistled loudly to the nearest Adion, and his squadmate veered in. "Take the Russian and the rest of the boys and waste those remaining transports! We saw them firing missiles earlier, and I don't want Mavericks with itchy trigger fingers downing expensive JSDF Polycraft! X and I will deal with Vulius."

"Right, Commanders. Good luck!" The Hunter swung away and coasted for the rest of the pack, and then they turned for the hovertransports.

The action by the other Hunters seemed to provoke Vulius into a state of higher rage, and the keen intellect he was famous for failed quickly. _"No! You won't stop us! I won't let you!" _The Hollow Knight Ride Armor turned after the Adions, and the shoulder pads opened up to reveal racks of miniaturized mortar rounds.

"Oh, like hell you're shooting up my boys!" Zero snarled. He gunned the engine, and they boosted after Vulius faster than X had ever gone on a Landchaser. He gripped Zero's shoulder hard with his free hand and yelped.

"Jeez, watch it! What's this thing run on, hellfire?!"

"Ha! You think the speed's fun, wait until you see what it's packing for firepower." Zero hit the firing trigger on the right handlebar, and a crystal cover over the nose of the Adion slid back. The recessed plasma cannon inside fired condensed shots almost as large as X's head towards the back of Vulius's Ride Armor.

Two shots crashed into the Hollow Knight before Vulius reacted, spinning the Ride Armor around like an ice skater and deflecting the rest of the barrage with his energy shield. _"Damn you, X!"_

"Hey, I thought I was the one doing the shooting." Zero snorted. "Why is he giving you all the credit?"

"Because he hates me more." X said, tightening his grip on Zero's shoulder. Even amidst the noise of the Adion's loud engines and the whine of his charging X-Buster, the sound of the mortars being fired from Vulius's shoulder was unmistakable, as were the tiny puffs of smoke. "Incoming!"

"Hang on, X!" Zero swerved wildly while keeping a forward course, narrowly avoiding one large splash after another from the exploding shells. X raised his Buster up and took aim, but couldn't get a clear shot.

_"So, that thing's got some agility, then?"_ Vulius snarled at them. _"Then let's see you dodge this!"_ The Ride Armor held out its beam lance and rushed them, and X fired his spiralshot. The double helix curved around the extended plasma blade and smashed hard into the energy shield Vulius used to defend himself. Plasma struggled with plasma, and the angry, gnashing fury of the purple spiralshot won out. The force that could drill holes through small mountains overloaded the energy shield, and the emitter on the Hollow Knight's forearm overloaded in a shower of sparks. Wounded, Vulius pressed the attack, and Zero barely managed to peel off from the dangerous game of chicken. The Maverick leader still managed a glancing blow, though, gouging a huge tear out of the port armor right over the thruster assembly.

"Shit!" Zero swore over the noise of the alarms. "He got us, X! This thing's gonna go critical on us, we have to get off before it blows!"

Cringing, X looked around. "I've had more vehicles and positions blown out from underneath me on this trip than the past year and a half in total!" He sighted the shore…Hokkaido's shore. They'd managed to cross the entire Strait…and by the look of it, the other Adion riding Hunters were making short work of the remaining transports. "Head for shore, we'll bail out there!"

With an enraged Vulius hot on their heels, X and Zero glided their damaged Landchaser to the shore and kicked off of it. The smoking hovercycle careened onwards, wobbled wildly without a driver, and then smashed into some rocks. It spun up into the air, and the engines finally detonated, turning the machine into an expensive firework. The two Hunters dug their heels in and ground sand and gravel underneath their feet, coming to a halt after their wild ride. They glanced up and over, and with relief, saw the final hovertransport take a mortal blow from the cannonfire of Unit 0's riders.

And then Vulius and the damaged Ride Armor came to a stop on the shore fifteen meters away from them. Inside his protected cockpit, the Maverick seethed.

_"You think you've won, Hunters? I'll admit, you've well and truly pissed me off by ruining my fake little invasion. I never would have imagined that you'd be so crazy as to work with the Russians. But your little victory doesn't matter. New Tokyo will still burn, and when it does, the world shall descend into chaos!"_

"Really?" Zero raised an eyebrow. He summoned up his Z-Buster and started to charge a shot. X did as well, and the matching glows from their arm cannons synchronized perfectly. "That's gonna be kind of difficult, sport. We found your other bombs and disabled them. Nobody else is dying in New Tokyo today."

Vulius blinked rapidly at that, suddenly rendered mute.

"Hey, look, Zero. He's speechless. How did that happen?" X asked mockingly.

"Must be because the biggest wiseass in Japan finally got outsmarted."

_"You did not outsmart me."_ Vulius rasped, shaking with rage. _"You're all incompetents. Imbeciles! Had it not been for that accident, you would have never looked for more plasmic devices!"_

"Ah, I see. So we didn't outsmart you, you lost because of sheer dumb circumstance." Zero cackled. "Must be even worse, then. And here's the kicker, sport. You don't get to walk away from this one. We're taking you down. Now."

"Don't pass go. Don't get your two hundred dollars." X went on coldly. "And no last requests."

_"Oh, but I had such a good one." _Vulius bit the words off. _"Your heads on a platter!"_

He rushed them, beam lance raised for the killing blow, and X and Zero fired. Spiralshot and doubleshot seared the air, and then Zero followed with an overcharged saber throw. Vulius side-dashed and avoided the worst of the storm, but still the overcharged saber, aimed after the primary shots, came in too close to be dodged. The crescent blade of plasma gouged clean through the right arm of the Ride Armor and sent it flying away, taking the plasma blade with it. Screaming, Vulius used his remaining arm to backhand X sideways, and snapped up Zero in the large hamfist, squeezing tightly.

Grimacing in pain, Zero tried to use his green beam saber to cut away the fingers holding him captive. Vulius fired a burst of Vulcan gunfire from a pair of small barrels on either side of his cockpit's neck, striking Zero's hand and ripping servos and the weapon away.

"Gyah! You son of a bitch!" Zero rasped.

Vulius squeezed even tighter still. _"If there is one consolation prize to all this, I will at least rid the world of you, Commander Zero Omega. The next time I fight X, you won't be there to save him."_

To that, a wounded Mega Man X leapt up onto the Hollow Knight's back, leaning far too close to the reinforced canopy for comfort. "Well, guess I'll just have to save him this time, then." With a feral yell, X slammed his forehead and the reinforced ridges of his Paladin Armor's helmet down against the transparisteel dome covering the cockpit, causing a spiderweb of cracks to appear on its surface.

_"What the…! Get off! Get off of me!"_ Vulius shouted, spinning the Ride Armor around wildly to try and throw X clear of him. X merely dug his wristclaws in deeper, hanging on for dear life, and rode the bucking Ride Armor like a bull. Again, and again, and again, he headbutted the dome over Vulius and the cockpit, widening the pattern of cracks one blow at a time until finally, the transparisteel dome shattered. Vulius let out a scream of dismay, and X gave him no time to react. Forming a Buster with one hand and reaching to his chest with the other, X opened up his chest compartment and removed the Sub-Tank that Hazil had so lovingly given to him. With a clean stab, he shoved the feeder line of the Sub-Tank into the cockpit's access port, then used his dash thrusters to hurl himself clear. A well-placed green sizzler shot aimed at the Ride Armor's wrist was enough to cause the grip to loosen, and Zero dropped through the relaxed fingers. The two Hunters dashed clear, with Zero scooping up his Z-Saber on the way, and they held position out of arm's reach of the damaged Ride Armor.

Smoke and showers of sparks were flying up from inside of the cockpit, and a panicked Vulius struggled to maintain control of the suddenly erratic weapon. _"What did you do?!" _Vulius cried out, his voice gurgling on the speakers now.

"I gave it too much of a good thing." X said vengefully. "You wanted your Ride Armor. Now it can be your tomb."

Vulius let off another ear-splitting shriek, and X looked over to Zero after another particularly impressive detonation of smoke from the Hollow Knight. "Uh, we might want to back up a bit."

"Read my mind." Zero agreed quickly, and the two dashed for cover.

A second and a half later, the onboard microfusion generator powering the Hollow Knight Ride Armor went critical from the energy overfeed, and weapon and Maverick both were annihilated in a particularly impressive spherical fireball.

When the dust cleared, X lifted his arms away from above his head and looked over to where Zero was ducked against the ground. The Crimson Hunter looked back at him, arching an eyebrow.

"A Sub-Tank overcharge? Really? I gave you points when you did it to Boomer Kuwanger, but that was ridiculous."

"Actually, I was taking a page from your book." X countered, standing up and dusting himself off. "Of course, I did it without self-detonating. So you're welcome. Dick."

Zero came up to his feet, snorting derisively. "Well, aren't you a piece of work."

"I learned from the best." X told his friend, breaking into an ear to ear grin. After a moment's hesitation, Zero chuckled and returned the expression.

_"…ick Hunter Headquarters to Commanders X and Zero. Respond. This is Maverick Hunter Headquarters, do you read?"_

X and Zero raised their hands up to the sides of their helmets. "Huh, radio's working again." X said cheerfully.

"Wiseass." Zero looked down to his wounded hand, which he kept dangling at his waist. "Zero to base. Go ahead."

_"JSDF assets are scrambled and inbound. What's the situation?"_

"Vulius is offline and all Maverick assets have been destroyed." Zero told the base operator. "So you can go ahead and tell the flyboys to stand down. The Hunters took care of business today."

"With a little help from our Russian allies." X added, glancing down the beach. The rest of Unit Zero was driving to meet them, and Belyi was still riding with them.

When the Adions halted and set down, Belyi hopped off and marched up to X and Zero.

"It is done?" He asked them.

X nodded. "Vulius won't be hurting anyone anymore."

Belyi looked meaningfully to the glaring blast pattern of crystallized rock and sand on the beach where the Hollow Knight Ride Armor had gone up. "So I see. Then I must return, make report."

"Yeah, we've got paperwork of our own to file." X held out his hand to the Russian. "For what it's worth…it was good working with you. Maybe we'll do it again sometime."

Belyi stared down at the hand through his opaque visor and said nothing until X nervously pulled his hand back. "I think not. " He turned and walked off away from the Hunters, as rigid in his step as his personality.

"What crawled up his ass?" Zero grumbled.

X watched sadly as Belyi turned the corner of the beach and walked out of view. "He lost friends today."

* * *

Many people assumed that the white armored reploid known as Belyi didn't feel anything. That was far from the truth. He felt everything…he just refused to show his emotions. Especially to strangers.

Alone, on the other side of some large rocks and out of earshot of the Maverick Hunters, Belyi slumped against a boulder and bowed his head. Victory had come at too steep a price today. Davich, lost to madness. And Krazny…

_"Volya."_

Volya, for that was his real name, jerked upright. His radio chimed with the incoming call. It carried Krazny's Identity Code. "You are alive?"

_"You think I do not know how to bail out of burning car?"_ Krazny seemed offended.

Volya managed a weak laugh. "You had me worried."

_"It is done, then?"_

"Da. We stopped the Mavericks. War will be prevented today."

_"Good. And the equipment? Our superiors were quite concerned about the _Polyy Rytsar _armor…"_

"_Polyy Rytsar_ is destroyed." Volya explained. "All weapons are destroyed, or sunk."

Krazny said nothing for a moment. _"They will not be pleased."_

"Is better than alternative." Volya removed his helmet and ran a hand through his short black hair. "They may lose face, but we are still alive."

_"For now." _Krazny said. _"Return home."_

"Da." The line went dead, and Volya slipped his helmet back on. The Spetsnaz operative known as the _Belyi D'yavol_ took one last look to the east, and the brightening skies.

In the glow of morning, he disappeared from Japan.

And the world kept spinning.


End file.
